The New York State Department of Labor’s official “Guidelines for meal periods” publication answers the question, “How much time to do I get for lunch breaks?”
The long and short for most construction related employees is: “An employee who works a shift of more than six hours, which extends over the noonday meal period, is entitled to at least thirty minutes off within that period for the meal period.” If you work in a factory, you get 60 minutes.
There are other nuances associated with this law. You can read about them here.
Whatever you heard about breaks at 10am and whenever… those are most often associated with Project Labor Agreements or the rules that many Unions operated under.
The other thing that I’ll offer in the “for whatever it’s worth” category, is that the guy who is more worried about how many breaks he is entitled to rather than what he can do to help the company succeed, usually does not last long at his job.