Gonna have to disagree with your interpretation of the California Law as it is written:
Division of Labor Standards:
Q. What are the basic requirements for meal periods under California law?
A. Under California law (
IWC Orders and
Labor Code Section 512), employees must be
provided
The Law does not
require an employee to take a break, the
company is required to provide a minimum of 30 minutes of break time to the employee.
Unless the employee is
relieved of all duty during the entire thirty-minute meal period and is free to leave the employer's premises, the meal period shall be considered "on duty," counted as
hours worked, and paid for at the employee's
regular rate of pay.
Relieved of all duty, was put into the law to deal with establishments such as 7-11 and like businesses that may not have another employee to
relieve of all duty the employee that is taking a break. Their lunch (break) may be intermittently interrupted by customers, and are not able to leave the premises, thus it is required to be paid.
Relieved of all duty, according to the statue does not cover the scenario you depicted as, "We have no work, you are relieved of duty." A courier has other duties apart from delivering packages and sorting and loading freight. There are codes for these tasks as you are well aware.
Under your scenario did the company fulfill it's lawful duty to provide for a break, the answer would be yes. Does the company have written policies when these breaks should be taken, the answer would be yes again. Does the company still have the policy, which was treated as a prohibition generally of no breaks in the first or last hour, barring unforeseen events events that would affect operational need, that would still be a yes as far as I currently understand. Occasional waiting for freight, does not trigger an operational need for breaks. Whether a break is taken during the waiting period does not change or affect the operation.
I think you conveniently said "We have 75 minutes of work" to negate citing the no break in the first hour. If you managed like that, you're a POS and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to work for you, it would be a huge indicator of how you treated other issues.