Hours Worked and Overtime

• The federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the state of Nevada require employers to pay overtime rates, equivalent to 150 percent of a regular wage, for every hour in a work week in which an employee works beyond 40 hours. In addition, Nevada Revised Statutes 608.018 requires that employers pay overtime for all time worked beyond an eight-hour workday; a 12-hour shift accrues four hours of overtime. If employers and employees enter into a contract that defines a work week as four 10-hour days, overtime isn't necessary until the worker works more than 10 hours in a workday.
  
  

Breaks

• Nevada and federal labor laws don't require employers to provide coffee or lunch breaks, regardless of the number of hours an employee works in a single sitting. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that employers compensate workers for brief breaks of up to 20 minutes in the case that employers allow them. In the case of breaks longer than 20 minutes, such as lunch breaks which are generally 30 minutes or longer, an employer may require employees to punch out and not be compensated for their time away from their job.
  
  

Workers Under 16 Years Old

• Nevada Revised Statutes 609.240 limits the number of hours any worker who is 15 or under may work in a single week to 48 total, and bars workers under the age of 16 from working more than eight hours in any given day. Children who work on farms, in the making of movies or in domestic service aren't subject to these limited hours of employment. Federal and Nevada state law doesn't require employers to grant breaks to child workers.
  
  

Contract Situations

• Contract law may require an employer to grant breaks or rest periods to workers as defined by a collective bargaining agreement or an individual contract. If a labor contract specifies regulations for the length of a workday, the maximum number of hours a worker may be required to work in a week or break periods, employers are required to honor those stipulations. Nevertheless, violating those agreements is a breach of contract, and not a matter of labor law.