A former factory worker has filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Hawthorne rocket manufacturer SpaceX required employees to work through lunch breaks and did not provide overtime pay.

The lawsuit also claims the company founded by Elon Musk, officially known as Space Exploration Technologies, rounded down the actual number of hours employees worked.

Workers “were systematically denied their rest breaks due to the demands placed upon them by … their managers,” the lawsuit reads.

California labor law guarantees workers a 10-minute break for every shift lasting two to four hours and two 10-minute breaks for shifts lasting six to eight hours.

The law also requires an uninterrupted, 30-minute meal period for shifts lasting longer than five hours and two meal periods for shifts lasting longer than 10 hours.

If employees work through a meal or rest break, they are supposed to be compensated with an extra hour of regular pay.

SpaceX employees were forced to choose between taking one meal break or two short breaks and “were consistently required to work in excess of four hours without being provided proper 10-minute rest periods,” the lawsuit claims.

The suit was filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court by Joseph A. Smith, a former SpaceX toolmaker who lives in Orange County.

James Hawkins APLC, the Irvine law firm representing Smith, declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday.

SpaceX also declined to comment.

The case comes days after two SpaceX employees sued the company for failing to provide adequate notice before laying off 200 to 400 workers in July.

The California WARN Act requires companies to give a 60-day notice before mass layoffs of 50 employees or more, but SpaceX has claimed the employees were fired, not laid off.

The firing of “low performer” employees, as the company has called them, would exempt SpaceX from the WARN Act, which only applies to layoffs.

A SpaceX spokesperson said the firings account for less than 5 percent of the total workforce, or about 200 of the company’s nearly 4,000 employees.

SpaceX has hundreds of job postings listed on its website.

Spokesman John Taylor said in an email that the company is expecting a 20 percent net increase in employee growth in 2014.