Our partners at Barran Liebman sent us an update on these new BOLI regulations. Effective January 1, 2008, the Oregon legislature passed a bill permitting food and beverage service employees who receive and report tips to VOLUNTARILY waive their meal periods. The Bureau of Labor and Industries recently issued regulations implementing this new law and posted waiver forms in English and Spanish as well as the Notice employers must post.
Pursuant to the new regulations, if an employer agrees, an employee may waive his or her meal period if ALL of the following conditions are met:
- The employee must be employed to serve food or beverages, receive tips, and report the tips to the employee’s employer.
- The employee must be at least 18 years of age.
- The employee must voluntarily request to waive his or her meal periods no less than seven calendar days after beginning employment. This waiver must be in writing in the language used by the employer to communicate with the employee, on the form provided by BOLI, and signed and dated by both the employee and the employer. The employer must retain and keep available a copy of the waiver throughout the employee’s employment and for six months after the employee’s termination date.
- The employee must be provided a reasonable opportunity to consume food during any workshift of six hours or more while continuing to work and the employee must be paid for any and all meal periods in which the employee is not completely relieved of all duty.
- Even with the written waiver on file, the employee must not be required to work longer than eight hours without receiving a 30-minute meal period in which he or she is relieved of all duty.
- The employer must make and keep available records of hours worked by each employee, which indicate whether or not the employee has received a meal period.
Employees may revoke their waiver of meal periods by providing no less than seven days notice to their employer. Employees may request to take a meal period without revoking their waiver by submitting to their employer written notice no less than 24 hours prior to the meal period(s) requested.
Under no circumstances may an employer coerce an employee into waiving a meal period. This means that the employer (or anyone on the employer’s behalf) cannot request or require an employee to sign a waiver. Additionally, the employee may not sign a waiver prior to being employed for seven calendar days.
Under no circumstances may an employee waive his or her 10-minute rest periods required by law.