New Oregon Food Server Break Laws

Under new regulations issued by the Oregon BOLI or Bureau of Labor and Industries, food servers can opt to waive their unpaid meal breaks, but not their paid rest breaks.

Tipped Oregon food service workers over the age of 18 may opt out of their required 30-minute meal breaks if they like. The employee must complete a waiver form, available in English or Spanish from the BOLI website.

Employers cannot require an employee to waive breaks, or coerce employees to do so under the new regulations. Either the employer or the employee can revoke the waiver at any time by written notice.

However, if the employer has a signed, non-revoked waiver on file, the employee can be excused from taking the meal breaks. The employee must still take the paid 10-minute rest breaks, under state law.

BOLI recently updated the state meal break regulations. The new regulations permit employers to waive the required meal breaks under certain exceptional circumstances, such as power failure, fire or flood, or equipment malfunction.

In addition, some employers are permitted to always waive the required meal breaks when it would be an undue hardship for an employee to be relieved from all work duties for the 30 minute meal break. Employers who wish to use this exception must issue a BOLI waiver to all affected employees by March 16, 2009. 

In some cases, the required meal break can be shorter than 30 minutes, if it is established industry practice to give shorter meal break. However, the break must still be longer than 20 minutes and the employee must be relieved of all work duties during the breaks.

In each case, the employee must still be given sufficient time to eat a meal while on duty or on call, and to rest and use the restroom. In addition, the employee must be paid for all the time that he or she works.

The law does not affect the requirement that an employee must have 10 minute uninterrupted rest breaks for each 4-hour work period.

BOLI implemented these new regulations after input from the public and employers, plus employer representative groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and SHRM, the Society of Human Resource Management.

Oregon is one of nineteen U.S. states that require meal breaks for virtually all employees. Others include California and Illinois.