One more thing

I do still have one more thing to say about tea breaks. I should have mentioned in my last post that government legislation won't necessarily change the problem with getting breaks. The main reason employers don't like breaks, is that in order for some workers to take breaks you need other workers to cover those breaks. There are many industries (including white collar places where people eat lunch at their desk), where systemic under-staffing is a central way that the employers make their profit.

Legislation won't change that. If you work in a cafe and its Saturday morning, but there are only two people on at the counter, then neither of them are going to take a break, because that just mean the orders back up and youhave to work twice as hard on the other side, then many workers are just going to ignore their breaks. Likewise if you work in an office, and you can't go home till the project is done, then you might eat lunch at your desk so you can leave at seven rather than seven thirty, however much you want or need half an hour away from the office.

It's not legislation which makes a difference in workplaces like these, it's strong union organising.

100 years ago coal-miners struck for their break. The 'left-wing' version of New Zealand history says this strike was the beginning of a movement that climaxed with the election of the first labour government in the 1930s (the left-wing version of history was always inaptly named, and written well before the fourth labour government). The move from industrial action to political power wasn't a glorious one, but a step backwards. Breaks will always be better protected by unions than by legislation.