Legal Question in Employment Law in California

Yes, employers are legally required to provide at least a 30 minute meal break for work in excess of 5 hours. It may be waived, by mutual agreement if the work lasts 6 hours but not a 7 hour shift. Your employer is merely doing what it is supposed to be doing.

This is an area of the law that has gone back and forth a great deal. At one time the state was ruling that the employer was required to assure that the employee take the meal break. I have not looked this up in about a year, and as I said this keeps changing, but I'm pretty sure now that employer is only obligated to assure the employee CAN take a 30-minute meal break when one is required. The meal break must be a continuous 30-minutes in most industries. The rest breaks, which only need to be ten minutes, must be "on the clock" although they can require you to clock in and out to record the break as long as they pay you as if you were on the clock. They cannot satisfy the meal break requirement by giving you two 15 minute breaks and deducting pay for it. If, however, you are in fact permitted to take a continuous 30-minute meal break and do not do so, they can probably quite legally say they assumed you took the time when it was available and not pay you for it.