Let them have cake-breaks

David Farrer asks if there are any employers who don't give tea breaks. He even asks if there has ever been a case taken to the employment tribunal around employees being denied breaks that aren't in their agreement. Which is patently ridiculous, because there are no grounds to take the case at the moment, it'd be like taking a case to the employment tribunal about not being paid extra for overtime, if it wasn't mentioned in your agreement. New Zealand has had almost no minimum employment code for 17 years now, you'd think people would be used to that fact.

It seems pretty clear to me that David Farrer's only worked in white collar jobs, because in retail and hospitality things are quite different. I have talked to a school student who was working at a petrol station on Saturday morning from 6am until 2pm without any kind of a break. I have known high-level management forbid tea-breaks after they discovered local managers were allowing them. These happened in reasonably large companies you would have heard of. It's much, much worse in small retail and hospitality outlets; I know there are workers in some cafes who never get a break.