For What It’s Worth

It appears while I was away, my earlier post on shift breaks and human rights was regrettably interpreted by some local readers as a critique of Amherst Coffee, rather than of the absence of federal legislation on shift breaks and its potential connection to smoking habits.

I’ve updated the original post to make my meaning clearer. Although I derived my initial curiosity about federal laws from my conversations with and observations of Amherst Coffee employees (as well as from my personal experience in my own workplace), the research I did and the argument I make are not about Amherst Coffee or any particular employer but rather about the general state of workers’ rights law in the US.

As I understand it, Amherst Coffee in fact has an informal system of breaks in place with which its employees are largely satisfied – a striking contrast to some other examples I provide in the post. Point is, government shouldn’t be leaving this to the discretion of employers.