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Subject:Re: 825 and 925 From:"Dick Margulis" <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sat, 17 Jun 2000 10:24:46 -0400
rickk -at- slmd -dot- com wrote:
>
>> How does a 9-to-5
>> workday translate into a 40 hour work week if employees eat lunch?
>
While everything Elna Tymes said is true, Rick's original question about the origin of the colloquial "9-to-5" hasn't been addressed yet.
Rick, back in the 1950s, in some types of business, in some places (mostly Manhattan), companies were delighted to be able to get people to show up at nine and not leave until five. The expression survives in the language, even if the practice doesn't.
With respect to the question of how five 9-5 days adds up to 40 hours, you have to realize that organized labor was much stronger 50 years ago than it is now. The basic idea was that you were entitled to two 15-minute breaks (paid) and a half-hour lunch (unpaid) in an 8-hour day (still the law, by the way, for hourly workers), meaning that in NYC you worked an actual 35 hours and were paid for 37.5. If the half-hour lunch stretched to an hour on a regular basis, how the boss treated that extra half hour depended on the boss and the current labor market.
Outside of NYC, though, I think most businesses stayed at a 40-hour week, starting earlier than 9.
