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Nasir and Matt discuss the recent conflict between the California Labor Code and Industrial Welfare Commission concerning a second meal period for healthcare employees working in excess of 12 hours. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business law podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha. This is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist, and it’s just me today, right? MATT: I’m also here. I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Oh. Oh, okay. Well, Matt Staub joining us once again. Thank you for joining us. MATT: Your intros remind me of – I’m going to have to explain this to you first. So, for baseball, typically, you have a line-up where you have your batting order and it stays fairly constant throughout the year. I mean, you have maybe your speed guys up front, your first one or two batters, and then your power hitters at three, four, five, and then maybe six and then, like, seven, eight, nine is your worst hitters. But, if you’re in a slump, if the team’s in a slump, sometimes the manager will just, like, throw everyone’s name in a hat and then, you know, you’ll pick a number and you’ll have, like, a random batting order. That’s how I see the intros. It’s the same nine pieces, but it’s always mixed around because you did, like, part seven then, you know, your name was one, but that came later so it was very, very interesting. NASIR: Well, believe it or not, I actually put much more thought in it than you think. I spend the night before usually writing it and it actually comes out exactly how I write it up so it may seem random but it’s not. This takes skill. MATT: Yeah, I’m not complaining about it. You always keep me guessing. NASIR: I appreciate that. MATT: Well, we have some California employment law that we’re going to discuss today. NASIR: Nice. MATT: Everybody, hold onto your seats because this is going to be a big one. I think it pertains to health care workers which, I imagine, the ones that are working these 12-hour-plus shifts probably aren’t listening to this podcast – or maybe they are if they’re doing this during their break. NASIR: Or maybe on the job, yeah. I know some health care workers that do listen to our podcast. So, yeah, I think they’re listening to us right now and probably going to sue their employer after this episode, probably – hopefully not. MATT: Hopefully not. So, we have the California Labor Code and then we have the Industrial Welfare Commission – the IWC. So, basically, what happened was there was a recent decision that health care workers cannot waive their second meal period when working in shifts of excess of 12 hours despite the IWC’s order saying that they could. You know, typically, people work 8 hours. That’s, like, a standard work day. But, if you’re working in excess of that, you do get a second meal period after a certain amount of time. So, if you’re working in the health care industry and you work in excess of 12 hours, what they were recently saying was you can just waive that second meal period and keep on working because, typically, if you’re working those sort of shifts, they need you to be there and be working or else they’ll probably just send you home. So, that’s what workers were doing. But, now, they’ve decided that, “Hey, you actually can’t waive that second period and you’re going to have to work.” So, this is going to be a pretty challenging thing for hospitals and other health care companies, but this can pertain to other businesses as well. Typically, people aren’t working 12-hour shifts, but I think this can stretch possibly to other industries. NASIR: I think for lawyers and even employers, it kind of puts you off a little bit because, okay, all of a sudden, okay, you have the Labor Code that specifies you have to have this second lunch after 12 hours or at 12 hours, that’s fine, right? But then, the IWC comes out with their wage order which typically what happens is this agency is usually assigned to kind of clarify some of these n...