Employment: meal periods.

Existing law requires employers to provide meal periods and rest periods, as specified. Existing law requires an employer who fails to provide a meal period or a rest period to pay the employee one additional hour of pay at the employee's regular rate of compensation for each workday that the meal or rest period is not provided. Under existing law, an employer who fails to provide a required meal period may be guilty of a misdemeanor. This bill would provide that the payment of that additional one hour of pay per workday in which the employer failed to provide a meal period or a rest period would constitute compliance with any requirement to provide an employee with a meal period or rest period and is the exclusive remedy for that failure to provide a meal period or rest period and would no longer constitute a misdemeanor. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.