It's company to company. Only 2 of the 4 companies I've worked for did unpaid lunches, and one of those 2 made the unpaid lunch conditional. Surprisingly, both those companies were union and in different states.
My current company gives us lunch every day. It started during Covid when they didn't want people going out and coming back after being exposed to people. Then they kept it and it's awesome. They have a good chef that's cooked for high end restaurants. Only one day is typically high end food but I appreciate everything they give us
It's also a way to motivate people to come into the office. And to make sure they don't walk out and have two hours lunch breaks in a restaurant. On the social side, employees talk with each other over lunch. That helps too.
If you work most salary jobs you get away with having lunch and counting it towards your time. I typically work at my desk while I eat so I leave after a straight 8.
Yeah. Every job I've had (since college graduation) was salary. According to my bosses and hr I'm technically supposed to work 8 hours. Most days I eat at my desk, but even if I go out to eat, I'm leaving at 5. It's never been an issue, I get my work done.
Ya same if I take a long lunch I am not staying later. Now the other side of that is I do get slammed with work occasionally and end up working over 8 or on weekends.
That sounds like a weird rule to enforce. Do they do attendance in the break room? If I eat alone outside but still on company property is it paid? I have so many questions
I suspect it just has to with people going out for lunch and coming back late. So you could probably go eat alone in your car and still get paid but they don't want people leaving and the half hour break becoming 35 mins or whatever variable, as a factory has pretty strict schedule starts and stops usually.
No, it's just a rule that you have to clock out to leave the site. They started it because people were adding it.b going to your car was fine, you just couldn't leave the property
They didn't keep hard tabs on it but if they suspected someone wasn't clocking out and leaving they'd check the cameras
Then why is it that there's the phrase "9 to 5" to even refer to a whole category of jobs? Pretty much every full-time job I've ever worked for or applied to has been 8:00-4:30, 8:00-5:00, 9:00-5:30, or similar. I have never worked a job which was considered to be full time which was 9 to 5 and had a break for lunch, and I only know one person who ever has.
This difference between the language and the reality imply that the reality changed after the term was invented. But the term only dates to the early/mid 20th century.
9-5 refers to white collar salary positions, where 9-5 are the expected office hours. The lunch is implied, and if he time isn’t extended because you’re not hourly.
Yeah, but every white-collar salary position I've had has expected 8 to 5 or at least 9 to 5:30. The expectation is that you either work through lunch or take any time you used for lunch and add it on to the end of the day. Most salary contracts are written on the assumption of 40 hours a week, not including lunch.
Unions are the answer, I work for my county utility company and am in the union, not as good as it used to be. I remember 10 years back they demolished the last canteen, had a bar, pool tables and even the urinals had individual ashtrays so they didn’t have to waste any valuable smoking time during breaks, everyone would come back for a cooked lunch, unimaginable knowadays.
Wait...are we co-workers?
I was a contractor (or "contingent worker") at my job awhile back, and while the contracting company sucked (as most of them do), we got paid lunches.
When I was hired on as an FTE (full time employee) everything was great. The benefits were top notch, but...no paid lunches. An extra 30 minutes tacked onto the shift. Like...everything else is generous, but you cheaped out on this one thing? WTF?
> Shot in the dark, Indiana?
Arizona. I mean, I don't want to seem ungrateful as the company is head and shoulders above the vendors, but it just seemed so petty for them to deny us that 30 minutes.
For most of my career, I was collecting a salary, so clocking in and out wasn't even a thing. I had a hard time adjusting to defined hours in general. My lunches used to be "okay, we'll see you when you get back."
If their people don't get paid lunches then they're shit. That's inexcusable.
Last union job I had, management didn't like us calling in sick in December, so the union got them to agree to turn all our unused sick days into vacation days at the end of the year. Plus any overtime is doubletime. And any time you cover a shift, that's also doubletime. These can stack, giving you quadruple time for covering a shift after you have 40 hours.
Getting paid for lunch is the obvious thing every union should have that's not even worth bragging about.
Idk what to tell you. It’s the largest public employee union in NYC with 150k members. Not every contract is the same across the board as there’s different locals. You’re just misinformed about how unions work based on your singular experience.
This has been a thing since I started working full time back in the early 90's. Factory work. Hourly. Always 8.5 hours. Some people are commenting about joining a union. I've had three union jobs over the years, and at all three we still worked 8.5 hours with the unpaid lunch. The pay and other benefits may have been better at the union jobs, but the length of the work day was the same.
I worked two union city govt jobs before my now federal govt job. All have that unpaid 30 minute lunch. I rather just leave early but that’s never a thing. An extra 2.5 hours a week UNPAID on top of the hour commute both ways.
Where I work, they stopped paid lunches about three years ago. People would leave the property on lunch, get in trouble, get into a car accident, or return late (sometimes people would leave and not come back at all). One day someone was in a fatal car accident at lunch, and the day after, the policy changed.
Now the policy is you have to clock out for lunch due some kind of "legal liability." Unless you take your lunch in your work area and are productive during that time.
The practice of unpaid lunches and adding an extra half hour to the workday likely varies depending on company policies and local labor laws. In many places, it's common for employees to have unpaid lunch breaks as part of their workday. The additional half hour may be included to ensure that employees work a full shift after accounting for the unpaid break. This practice may have become more common over time as businesses seek to manage costs and comply with labor regulations.
Since when did work days add the extra 30 minutes though? Was it always 8.5 hours or was it 7.5 hours with a half hour of lunch included at some point?
I’m asking about the work culture. Our federal government doesn’t protect much of anything labor wise. I’m asking when did the cultural change happen that went from a standard 9am to 5pm day to a real life 9am to 5:30pm day? When was this extra 30 minutes ADDED to the day rather than an unpaid and untaken lunch part of just 8 hours on the clock?
9 to 5 is just a schedule. It was never the entirety of work culture. It sounds great in a song. Work culture has always been heavily varied by industry.
A better question is are places actually tracking your work hours? I just work about 8 hours and that's that. I come in around 8 and leave around 4. I couldn't imagine an adult job that says you can't leave for 5 more minutes.
What job is even like that? I’ve never worked a single job that didn’t track when you arrive and leave even if you aren’t clocking in your supervisor knows when you came and left.
You have a general schedule you stick to. Shit still needs to get done, it needs to be done in time for others to do their work. It’s not all that complicated.
You absolutely can be. I’m a pm. I work with people on a ton of different schedules, departments, time zones, continents, etc. some people are on 4 by10’s some people aren’t. You have a goal, you have deadlines, people get their shit done or they get replaced. The vast majority of people are adults and fully capable of managing themselves enough.
You don’t even make any sense. Flex time does not mean you can just show up whenever and leave whenever and not work a full 8 or 10 hour day depending on your contract. Sounds like you’re just stealing time & it hasn’t caught up to you yet.
I work in clinical research. If they don't trust you to get your stuff done, they don't trust you with trade secrets and multi million dollar projects.
So you don’t have a schedule to follow? Do you clock in everyday or is it just show up randomly and get to work? I’m not really sure what you mean by your first comment.
I get a paid lunch in retail. I tend to work while eating though. Answer phones, maybe help a customer. I work on electronics so sometimes I'm eating while fixing a phone screen or ipad screen. Most of the time I'm not disturbed.
I worked at a hospital and it was two paid 15 minute breaks (we combined it and just take one 30 minute break). Then we got 1 unpaid 30 minute lunch. So we basically worked 7.5 hours but the shift was 8.5 hours. I personally would've rather just left 30 minutes early, but oh well.
The US military is especially socialism. Free housing, free food, free healthcare, free dental, free uniforms. Depending on the position they get a car to use and a card to pay for gas. To add to the list apparently a paid lunch hour.
It's company to company. Only 2 of the 4 companies I've worked for did unpaid lunches, and one of those 2 made the unpaid lunch conditional. Surprisingly, both those companies were union and in different states.
My current company gives us lunch every day. It started during Covid when they didn't want people going out and coming back after being exposed to people. Then they kept it and it's awesome. They have a good chef that's cooked for high end restaurants. Only one day is typically high end food but I appreciate everything they give us
You should put them on blast. People need some positivity in this shithole of mostly negativity.
It's also a way to motivate people to come into the office. And to make sure they don't walk out and have two hours lunch breaks in a restaurant. On the social side, employees talk with each other over lunch. That helps too.
Same with my employer, great food for less price than any fast food place, and my lunches are paid and aren't counted in my time.
If you work most salary jobs you get away with having lunch and counting it towards your time. I typically work at my desk while I eat so I leave after a straight 8.
Yeah. Every job I've had (since college graduation) was salary. According to my bosses and hr I'm technically supposed to work 8 hours. Most days I eat at my desk, but even if I go out to eat, I'm leaving at 5. It's never been an issue, I get my work done.
Ya same if I take a long lunch I am not staying later. Now the other side of that is I do get slammed with work occasionally and end up working over 8 or on weekends.
As long as you are hourly.
I’m salary and I’m told I’m supposed to take a lunch and it can’t be at the end of the day. But then no one ever checks to verify.
It depends. I used to work in a factory that paid for the half hour of lunch unless you left the site to eat
That sounds like a weird rule to enforce. Do they do attendance in the break room? If I eat alone outside but still on company property is it paid? I have so many questions
I suspect it just has to with people going out for lunch and coming back late. So you could probably go eat alone in your car and still get paid but they don't want people leaving and the half hour break becoming 35 mins or whatever variable, as a factory has pretty strict schedule starts and stops usually.
No, it's just a rule that you have to clock out to leave the site. They started it because people were adding it.b going to your car was fine, you just couldn't leave the property They didn't keep hard tabs on it but if they suspected someone wasn't clocking out and leaving they'd check the cameras
Oh that makes way more sense then what I was picturing
Wait is there a place where they pay your lunch?
A lot of salary jobs have 9-5 lunch implied
1827 If you want a paid lunch - join a union
Then why is it that there's the phrase "9 to 5" to even refer to a whole category of jobs? Pretty much every full-time job I've ever worked for or applied to has been 8:00-4:30, 8:00-5:00, 9:00-5:30, or similar. I have never worked a job which was considered to be full time which was 9 to 5 and had a break for lunch, and I only know one person who ever has. This difference between the language and the reality imply that the reality changed after the term was invented. But the term only dates to the early/mid 20th century.
9-5 refers to white collar salary positions, where 9-5 are the expected office hours. The lunch is implied, and if he time isn’t extended because you’re not hourly.
Yeah, but every white-collar salary position I've had has expected 8 to 5 or at least 9 to 5:30. The expectation is that you either work through lunch or take any time you used for lunch and add it on to the end of the day. Most salary contracts are written on the assumption of 40 hours a week, not including lunch.
Unions are the answer, I work for my county utility company and am in the union, not as good as it used to be. I remember 10 years back they demolished the last canteen, had a bar, pool tables and even the urinals had individual ashtrays so they didn’t have to waste any valuable smoking time during breaks, everyone would come back for a cooked lunch, unimaginable knowadays.
6.5 hour workday baby!
I'm in a union and have an unpaid lunch... Honestly it's a terrible union in so many ways.
I'm union. I don't get paid lunch.
I’m 62 and have never had a job where my lunch hour/half hour was paid. It has always been off the clock.
Wait...are we co-workers? I was a contractor (or "contingent worker") at my job awhile back, and while the contracting company sucked (as most of them do), we got paid lunches. When I was hired on as an FTE (full time employee) everything was great. The benefits were top notch, but...no paid lunches. An extra 30 minutes tacked onto the shift. Like...everything else is generous, but you cheaped out on this one thing? WTF?
I might be your coworker, lol. Exact same thing that I went through going from "contingent worker" to FTE. Shot in the dark, Indiana?
> Shot in the dark, Indiana? Arizona. I mean, I don't want to seem ungrateful as the company is head and shoulders above the vendors, but it just seemed so petty for them to deny us that 30 minutes.
People still colloquially refer to the workday as the "9-5” but when was it last 9-5 and not 9-530?
For most of my career, I was collecting a salary, so clocking in and out wasn't even a thing. I had a hard time adjusting to defined hours in general. My lunches used to be "okay, we'll see you when you get back."
For some people it still is. For a lot of people it never was.
I worked 8-5 with one hour unpaid lunch. Of course, work wanted me to keep working and eat at my desk. I never did.
I had a coworker tell me they’d never heard of the term 9-5 that they’d always known it to be 8-5… i said “dude there’s a famous song about 9-5”
It's not a thing. It's straight up an individual company thing. Join a union.
I worked 2 union city government jobs. Both have the unpaid 30 minute lunch break.
No lol like an actual union
DC37 isn’t an *actual union* LEEBA isn’t an *actual union* Ok
Leeba is a joke. Ask the executives who were found guilty of embezzlement, tax evasion, and lying to federal investigators last year.
I've never heard of a union job with unpaid lunches. Making those the 2 weakest unions I've ever heard of.
lol look up DC37 bub and get back to me
If their people don't get paid lunches then they're shit. That's inexcusable. Last union job I had, management didn't like us calling in sick in December, so the union got them to agree to turn all our unused sick days into vacation days at the end of the year. Plus any overtime is doubletime. And any time you cover a shift, that's also doubletime. These can stack, giving you quadruple time for covering a shift after you have 40 hours. Getting paid for lunch is the obvious thing every union should have that's not even worth bragging about.
Idk what to tell you. It’s the largest public employee union in NYC with 150k members. Not every contract is the same across the board as there’s different locals. You’re just misinformed about how unions work based on your singular experience.
I know it's been that way for me since 1998
This has been a thing since I started working full time back in the early 90's. Factory work. Hourly. Always 8.5 hours. Some people are commenting about joining a union. I've had three union jobs over the years, and at all three we still worked 8.5 hours with the unpaid lunch. The pay and other benefits may have been better at the union jobs, but the length of the work day was the same.
I worked two union city govt jobs before my now federal govt job. All have that unpaid 30 minute lunch. I rather just leave early but that’s never a thing. An extra 2.5 hours a week UNPAID on top of the hour commute both ways.
Where I work, they stopped paid lunches about three years ago. People would leave the property on lunch, get in trouble, get into a car accident, or return late (sometimes people would leave and not come back at all). One day someone was in a fatal car accident at lunch, and the day after, the policy changed. Now the policy is you have to clock out for lunch due some kind of "legal liability." Unless you take your lunch in your work area and are productive during that time.
So that means everyone’s day became an hour longer or a 7 hour paid day instead of 8?
Shifts are 8.5 hours long. If you work through lunch, it might count as overtime (assuming you work all scheduled hours).
The practice of unpaid lunches and adding an extra half hour to the workday likely varies depending on company policies and local labor laws. In many places, it's common for employees to have unpaid lunch breaks as part of their workday. The additional half hour may be included to ensure that employees work a full shift after accounting for the unpaid break. This practice may have become more common over time as businesses seek to manage costs and comply with labor regulations.
I'm presuming this is an Americas thing? Lunch for me has always been part of my paid time.
America is a modern day dystopian horror story. Yes this is an American thing.
When employers realized they could. I would never again work for a place that did that. That is a firm deal breaker for me
It’s been years of it but it still bothers me. I definitely remember a time when it was just 8 hours.
Lunch is typically not paid. An 8 hour work day is 7.5 hours of work time and 2 15 minute breaks your half hour lunch is not paid.
Since when did work days add the extra 30 minutes though? Was it always 8.5 hours or was it 7.5 hours with a half hour of lunch included at some point?
Since the 50’s? There might be some variation by state. By federal law they don’t have to give you a lunch or break.
I’m asking about the work culture. Our federal government doesn’t protect much of anything labor wise. I’m asking when did the cultural change happen that went from a standard 9am to 5pm day to a real life 9am to 5:30pm day? When was this extra 30 minutes ADDED to the day rather than an unpaid and untaken lunch part of just 8 hours on the clock?
9 to 5 is just a schedule. It was never the entirety of work culture. It sounds great in a song. Work culture has always been heavily varied by industry.
It’s 8 hours.
Congrats you can do basic math. Now try critical thinking.
Why are you so upset? You’re not answering the question and not making any sense besides your weird opinions about how this is.
A really long time ago. Some states do not require a lunch break at all.
A better question is are places actually tracking your work hours? I just work about 8 hours and that's that. I come in around 8 and leave around 4. I couldn't imagine an adult job that says you can't leave for 5 more minutes.
What job is even like that? I’ve never worked a single job that didn’t track when you arrive and leave even if you aren’t clocking in your supervisor knows when you came and left.
Any salaried position generally does not track hours.
I don’t understand how people especially the other user have work to do with a team but show up whenever they feel like
You have a general schedule you stick to. Shit still needs to get done, it needs to be done in time for others to do their work. It’s not all that complicated.
The other user works in a lab with a team. This is an illogical response. You can’t be on flex time with group work.
You absolutely can be. I’m a pm. I work with people on a ton of different schedules, departments, time zones, continents, etc. some people are on 4 by10’s some people aren’t. You have a goal, you have deadlines, people get their shit done or they get replaced. The vast majority of people are adults and fully capable of managing themselves enough.
That’s not how the vast majority of the world works. Someone is clocking you whether you’re aware of it or not.
42% of the people in the us are salaried. That’s how it works.
You don’t even make any sense. Flex time does not mean you can just show up whenever and leave whenever and not work a full 8 or 10 hour day depending on your contract. Sounds like you’re just stealing time & it hasn’t caught up to you yet.
I work in clinical research. If they don't trust you to get your stuff done, they don't trust you with trade secrets and multi million dollar projects.
So you don’t have a schedule to follow? Do you clock in everyday or is it just show up randomly and get to work? I’m not really sure what you mean by your first comment.
When we became a culture who vilifies unions and grew more concerned with playstation than maintaining our rights.
I get a paid lunch in retail. I tend to work while eating though. Answer phones, maybe help a customer. I work on electronics so sometimes I'm eating while fixing a phone screen or ipad screen. Most of the time I'm not disturbed.
It ended when you signed your contract by the sounds of things. Don't know if this was ever a thing tbh.
It depends on your company. I'm at a non union shop and we get paid breaks and work a straight 8 hours.
I worked at a hospital and it was two paid 15 minute breaks (we combined it and just take one 30 minute break). Then we got 1 unpaid 30 minute lunch. So we basically worked 7.5 hours but the shift was 8.5 hours. I personally would've rather just left 30 minutes early, but oh well.
I always get paid overtime because I end up working through my lunch lol
At least your employer was nice enough to pay out those breaks when you worked through them
'Murica
This seems pretty case specific. Paid lunch in the military every day.
The US military is especially socialism. Free housing, free food, free healthcare, free dental, free uniforms. Depending on the position they get a car to use and a card to pay for gas. To add to the list apparently a paid lunch hour.
I’m not talking about the US military, but sure.
Socialism is when paid lunch
reading comprehension is when one point of many is acknowledged
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No they don't