this also allows a slightly higher perceived hourly rate for the actual time at the job.
a 40 hr $15/hour job = $600/wk
“paying” $600 for 37.5 translates as $16/hr
or looked at another way, an employer can pay $16/hr for 37.5 hrs instead of $15 for 40 hrs and it costs the same amt on a weekly basis
The company I worked for prior to the job I have now had a 37 ½ hour work week. We worked 8:30AM to 5:00PM with 1 hour unpaid lunch. Then the company (3rd party health insurance administrator and insurance broker) decided to move us to a 40 work week. We were told we could either work 8:00AM to 5:00PM with a 1 hour unpaid lunch or 8:30AM to 5:00PM with a half hour unpaid lunch but once you made the choice of which schedule you were going to work, it was permanent.
But the kicker was they told us that they were making an “adjustment” to our pay so that we would bring home the same amount of money on a weekly basis. Of course all of us, many of us were hourly, quickly saw this as a pay cut. But management kept insisting it wasn’t since we were still bringing home the same weekly wage.