Employers are generally required to permit nonexempt employees in California to take a 10 minute, paid, uninterrupted, and off duty rest break (also known as a rest period) for every 4-hour work period worked in a workday. Each workday where an employer fails to permit a nonexempt employee to take a legally compliant rest break, the employer must pay that employee a full additional hour of regular rate wages as a premium.
If an employer that denies a rest period to a nonexempt employee also fails after that to pay that employee a full additional hour of regular rate wages as a premium, then that employer has engaged in another separate violation of the law against the employee.
(See Link(s): Labor Code Section 226.7 and Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders)