Rest breaks are an important area of employment rights; to ensure both the welfare of workers and the maintenance of workplace productivity.
Following a 2006 case in the European Court of Justice, it has been established that employers must establish in an active fashion that workers can take advantage of their right to rest breaks. This includes ensuring that there is no ‘de-facto’ pressure from either employers or work colleagues to skip rest breaks. The ruling stopped short of requiring employers to force their workers to take their rest breaks. What then are workers’ rights to rest breaks?
The relevant legislation is the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1998, which provides most workers with an entitlement to daily and weekly rest breaks. It also makes provision for rest breaks during the working day (with a lunch break taken at leisure counted as a rest break). Rest breaks during the day may or may not be paid, dependent upon the contract of employment. It is highly unusual for daily or weekly rests breaks (i.e. the hours in a day which are not spent at work and days off from work such as weekends) to be paid, unless they are spent on call. In certain industries, rest breaks might also be determined by health and safety legislation.
Provided a worker is over the age of 18, she or he is entitled to 11 hours of consecutive rest in each 24 hour period. In every seven day period, the worker is entitled to a continuous rest period of 24 hours. This may be averaged out over a two week period, so that the worker can take two days rest over a fortnight.
In a working day, or another working period which exceeds six hours in length, the worker is entitled to an uninterrupted rest break of a minimum of 20 minutes. Normally this should be taken during the working period rather than at the end of it, unless the contract or a workplace agreement says otherwise.
Certain types of worker are not covered by the Working Time regulations, and instead have their own rules or rely simply on their contract of employment to determine the limits to working times. Essentially, these workers have no statutory right to rest breaks. They are:
- Drivers covered by the Road Transport Directive, such as lorry, coach and HGV drivers
- Members of the armed forces, police and civil protection services
- Workers employed in domestic service in a private household.
Others may be exempt from the regulations if this can be justified by the technical nature of the industry. Instead the workers in these lines of work will be entitled to a compensatory rest period. This means that the worker is still entitled to the same length of rest breaks; they just may be deferred for a reasonable period of time, for instance, within a few weeks for a daily rest period and a few months for a weekly rest period. Typical types of worker who may get compensatory rest are security guards, couriers, taxi drivers, hospitals and workers in industries with peak demand times (such as tourist or retail businesses).
The law regarding rest entitlement tends to be more stringent for young workers (those under 18). A young worker is entitled to 12 uninterrupted hours in each 24-hour period in which they work. Young workers are entitled to two days off each week which cannot be averaged over a two week period and should normally be two consecutive days. If a young worker is required to work for more than four and a half hours at a stretch they are entitled to a rest break of 30 minutes.
Further information about rest breaks and the Working Time regulations is available from your local CAB.
Adam Tinson is an Information and Policy Officer with Citizens Advice