In our recent blog on compensable travel time, we examined when an employee’s commute stops being ordinary travel and becomes work time that must be paid by the employer. That question is part of a larger -- and frequently frustrating -- Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) problem: When is an employee actually working?

Compensable time is a bedrock FLSA concept, but it is not always intuitive. Employees obviously must be paid while actually performing their primary jobs. The difficult questions arise around the edges of the workday: logging in from home, traveling, waiting, attending training, checking messages, putting on equipment, and taking breaks. Small amounts of time multiplied across many employees and workdays can become a significant employer wage-and-hour liability.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (“DOL”) recently returned to this issue in Opinion Letter FLSA2026-11 (“Opinion Letter”). This time, the question addressed was whether employees had to be paid for a 60-minute lunch period when they spent between six and 14 minutes walking to and from the employer’s designated break area.

When a 60-Minute Lunch Includes a Long Walk

The employees at issue worked as security therapy aides at a detention facility. They were not permitted to bring food beyond the facility’s entry building or eat lunch at their workstations. Their collective bargaining agreement provided a 60-minute unpaid meal period, but employees had to walk three to seven minutes each way to reach the facility’s designated break area.

After accounting for necessary walking time, employees ended up with between 46 and 54 minutes in the break area itself. One employee argued that the entire 60 minutes should begin only after employees arrived there. Until then, the employee reasoned, they had not been fully relieved for lunch.

The DOL disagreed. It concluded that the entire 60-minute period was a bona fide meal period and did not have to be paid to the employees under the FLSA. Why? The employees were relieved of their work responsibilities, were not required to perform duties while eating, and retained substantially more than 30 minutes, which is ordinarily considered sufficient for a non-compensable meal period under the FLSA.

The fact that the employer dictated where employees could eat and required them to walk there did not, by itself, make the time compensable. The practical question was whether the restrictions and travel left employees with enough duty-free time to eat or attend to personal matters. Here, 46 to 54 minutes was more than sufficient, according to the DOL.

Duration Matters, but It Is Not the Only Question

The FLSA does not generally require employers to provide employees with either meal periods or rest breaks. When an employer chooses to provide them, however, the length and character of the break determine whether it can be treated as unpaid, rather than compensable, time.

Short rest breaks of 20 minutes or less generally must be paid because they primarily benefit the employer by allowing employees to rest briefly and remain productive while on the job. A bona fide meal period, by contrast, ordinarily may be unpaid. Thirty minutes is generally sufficient, although a shorter period can sometimes qualify depending on the circumstances.

What the employer calls the time does not control. Labeling a 20-minute break “lunch” will not necessarily make it an unpaid meal period. Nor will scheduling 30 minutes automatically solve the problem if required travel, interruptions, or restrictions leave employees without enough usable personal time. The Opinion Letter contrasted its facts with an earlier case involving security guards who received a 30-minute meal period but spent up to 12 minutes traveling to and from an employer-mandated lunch location. That left as little as 18 minutes for lunch. A court concluded that a jury could find the remaining time too short to constitute a genuine meal period.

The lesson is not that employers must pay whenever employees walk to a break room. It is that management must evaluate how much meaningful break time employees actually receive after accounting for the conditions the employer imposes.

Who Primarily Benefits From the Time?

Most courts and the DOL have focused on whether the meal period predominantly benefits the employer or the employee. Employees do not need absolute freedom from every workplace restriction. An employer may require employees to remain on the premises, eat in a designated location, or comply with reasonable security procedures without necessarily turning lunch into paid work. The analysis changes, however, when employees remain responsible for the employer’s business. An employee who must monitor a radio, answer calls, respond to customers, supervise residents, safeguard equipment, remain ready for frequent interruptions, or perform paperwork while eating may not be receiving an unpaid meal period at all.

The same concern applies to employee travel time. Walking to a cafeteria as a relieved employee is different from escorting clients, transporting equipment, inspecting a facility, or remaining responsible for safety while traveling to lunch. Management should examine what employees are expected to do during the time, not simply where they are going.

A Practical Management Review

Executives and HR leaders should begin by comparing written meal-period policies with actual workplace practices. A policy stating that employees receive 30 uninterrupted minutes is of little value if supervisors routinely contact them during lunch, staffing levels make relief impossible, or employees must spend much of the period completing required tasks.

Physical logistics matter. Employers should determine how long it actually takes employees to leave their work areas, clear security, store equipment, reach an approved eating area, obtain food, and return. The Opinion Letter does not establish a bright-line amount of permissible travel time. A 14-minute round trip was acceptable within a 60-minute break because ample personal time remained. The result would have been different when the scheduled meal period had been only 30 minutes.

Employers using automatic meal deductions should be particularly careful. The payroll system may deduct 30 or 60 minutes every day, but actual practices do not always cooperate. Employees need a simple and well-publicized way to report missed, shortened, or interrupted meals. Managers should be trained not to discourage corrections or suggest that employees finish necessary tasks “during lunch.”

HR also should review exception data. Frequent canceled deductions, repeated interruptions, or an entire department reporting no missed meals despite obvious staffing demands may indicate that the time records do not reflect reality. Payroll records should capture all work employees actually perform, not the break the schedule says they should have received.

Finally, the FLSA establishes only the federal floor. State law, local requirements, collective bargaining agreements, and employer policies may promise meal periods or impose protections beyond the FLSA. The Opinion Letter expressly declined to decide whether the detention facility’s collective bargaining agreement entitled employees to a full 60 minutes in the designated break area. A meal period can comply with the FLSA and still violate another legal or contractual obligation.

The broader takeaway is the same one we identified in the travel-time context: compensable-time questions turn on what employees are actually doing, how much control the employer exercises, and who receives the primary benefit. For management, the safest approach is to test payroll assumptions against the operational reality of the workplace. Lunch may be off the clock, but only when employees genuinely get lunch.

If you have questions about meal periods, timekeeping practices, or other FLSA wage-and-hour compliance issues, please contact Doug Taylor at (703) 526-5586 or rdougtaylor@beankinney.com or Timothy Hughes at (703) 526-5582 or thughes@beankinney.com.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not contain or convey legal advice. Consult an attorney regarding any specific legal questions. Any views or opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily the views of the firm or any client of the firm.