I am a professional cook and I work in a resaurant in Oregon. My managers and I recently discovered that our employer (the restaurant's owner) has been paying the hourly employees in the kitchen for LESS hours than we've actually been putting in. We brought this to our employer's attention; our employer responded by telling us that we are REQUIRED by law to take a 30 minute, unpaid break if we work a shift of 6 hours or more, therefore our employer has taken it upon himself to SUBTRACT 30 minutes from every shift we've worked before he does payroll - even though we don't take breaks and this "practice" of removing 30 minutes from every shift before calculating payroll was NEVER DISCLOSED to us or even the managers. We wouldn't have known had we not noticed the dicrepancies on our paychecks.
This raises 3 questions I'd like to ask of this forum's readers:
1) I understand the law to mean that my employer cannot DENY me a 30 min., unpaid break for any shift of 6 hours or more. Does the law really mean to say that I am REQUIRED TO TAKE this 30min., unpaid break?
2) Aren't we entitled to this lost pay which WE CAN PROVE our employer has been denying us?
3) ISN'T THIS ILLEGAL?
Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Here is the law. http://www.boli.state.or.us/BOLI/TA/T_FAQ_Restandmeal.shtml

However, that does NOT mean the employer can refuse to pay you if you worked through your meal period, whether or not it was "approved". The employer is expected to know when employees are working and when they are not. I would recommend filing a claim for unpaid wages with the state Dept. of Labor.

Has the employer provided a schedule or other information about when the employees are supposed to take their lunch breaks so that there is coverage of duties? Having said that, in the future, if you are going to be docked anyway, you might as well take the lunch break when the employer says take it; the employer does have that right.

Thankyou very much, Pattymd, for your reply to my post. Can you tell me how I go about filing a claim for unpaid wages with the State Dept. of Labor?

http://egov.oregon.gov/BOLI/WHD/W_Whhowinf.shtml