I work in the kitchen of a restaurant/eatery that overall employs 300 people so I am assuming it is goverened by bombay shops and establishment act (It's in Mumbai).
My question is - The act mentions a 9 hour work period per day, 48 hours per week, is that including or excluding break time? If it is including lunch time, can the company deduct one hour for rest and pay the employees for only 8 hours a day even though the employee has reported to work for 9 hours?
My second and more important question - Our employer used to pay overtime in slabs of 30 mins. But now they say they will not be paying for the first 30 min of over time i.e if we work overtime for 90 min we get paid only for 60 min, if we work for 2 hours we get paid for 90 min and so on. Is that allowed? They have given a long winded explanation that they give employees a leeway of 15 min when they report to work i.e an employee can be late by 15 min and his pay wont be deducted and also that they pay for the employees rest period every day (our pay is calculated as 9*hourly wage per day)and hence they want to compensate for that by not paying us for the first 30 min of over time.
I think what they are doing is not completely legal. So I need some help in understanding the 9 hour work period.
Please let me know if the question is not clear, I have tried my best to explain but this terminology is new to me and i might have missed some points.
Thank you