Employers are required to give California nonexempt employees, who work more than five hours in a workday, a full 30 minute uninterrupted off duty lunch break or meal period before exceeding 5 hours of working. However, unlike California’s requirement that employees take 10-minute rest periods in the middle of each 4-hour work period insofar as practicable, California has not imposed a specific requirement for when employers are supposed to provide lunch breaks. Accordingly, employers get to choose when they provide lunch breaks for nonexempt employees, as long as the lunch breaks occur before the employees exceed 5 hours of work.
Unfortunately, this means employees generally do not have any rights to determine when they will take lunch breaks at work. Finally, take note that if an employer fails to provide a nonexempt employee a compliant meal period, then the employer must pay that employee an additional one hour of regular rate pay as a wage premium for every workday where the employee does not receive a legally compliant meal period or lunch break.
(See Link(s): IWC Wage Orders 11; Labor Code Sections 226.7 and 512)