Article 85 of the Labor Code: Meal periods

The implementing rules of the Labor Code (1989 text on the Supreme Court E-Library), Book III, Rule I, Section 7, allow a meal period of not less than twenty minutes in four cases:

1. the work is non-manual or does not involve strenuous physical exertion;
2. the establishment regularly operates not less than sixteen hours a day;
3. there are actual or impending emergencies, or urgent work on machinery, equipment or installations to avoid serious loss to the employer; and
4. the work is necessary to prevent serious loss of perishable goods.

In these cases, the shorter meal period must be credited as compensable hours worked. The same section says rest periods or coffee breaks running from five to twenty minutes are compensable working time.

As a rule, no. In Bonpack Corporation v. Nagkakaisang Manggagawa sa Bonpack (2022), the Supreme Court read Article 83 together with Article 85. It said the compensable eight hours of work in a day do not include the 60 minutes off for regular meals, so the statutory one-hour meal break is not paid.

In the same case, the collective bargaining agreement set a 30-minute meal break and two 15-minute coffee breaks inside the eight-hour day. The Court held that those breaks were paid, and that the employer's one-hour "straight time" policy could not set the agreement aside. Workers who took the agreed breaks and worked twelve hours were owed four hours of overtime, not three.

In Sime Darby Pilipinas v. NLRC (1998), a factory replaced a 30-minute paid "on call" lunch break with a one-hour lunch break free from work, for all workers in the same line of work. The Supreme Court said fixing work schedules rests mainly with the employer, and upheld the change because it was made in good faith and the employees no longer had to work during the one-hour break. A change cannot be used to defeat rights under special laws or valid agreements, as Bonpack shows for a collective bargaining agreement.