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California employees' rights to meal breaks are governed by Labor Code section 512 and the applicable wage orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission. It is important to note that the right to meal periods and penalties is non-negotiable and cannot be waived in a collective bargaining agreement. Thus, the employee's membership in a union is immaterial to his right to meal breaks.
On the one hand, the law only requires that an employer make a meal period available and does not obligate employers to actually ensure that employees take advantage of the rights made available to them. Brown v. Federal Express Corp (2008). On the other hand, an employer has to make sure that the breaks are actually available and assuming that alone is not sufficient. Thus, the employer does not satisfy his obligation to provide meal breaks to truck drivers by merely assuming that they take breaks, because an employer has an affirmative obligation to ensure that workers are actually relieved of all duty at such times, and employers also have a duty to record their employees' meal periods. Cicairos v. Summit Logistics, Inc. (2005).
This means, that to avoid liability for failure to provide meal breaks, employers are advised to both (1) make sure that their employees are aware that they have meal breaks (signing an acknowledgment form to that effect might be one effective way to acquire evidence of compliance); and (2) make sure that the employees do not have to do any work while on a break (such as answering occasional work related phone calls, responding to the manager's inquiries while on a break, etc.)
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