In writing a solicitation for the residents of a senior community to give a contribution to a Christmas Fund for hourly employees, what is the correct heading for a flyer: 2022 Hourly Employee Christmas Fund or 2022 Hourly Employees Christmas Fund?
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To me hourly-paid sounds more natural than hourly.– mdeweyCommented Nov 6, 2022 at 12:02
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Agreed. "Hourly" doesn't have an obvious meaning in this context. You could work out that it has to mean "hourly-paid" but the cognitive strain makes the title much harder to read overall.– timchessishCommented Aug 9, 2023 at 13:03
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Disagree with the two comments above. "Hourly" and "Salaried" are very common ways of distinguishing types of employees; I've never heard either with "paid" appended.– Allison CCommented Dec 7, 2023 at 15:25
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1 Answer
It's certainly natural, and the same usage is common with other 'employee' phrases: "employee benefits", "employee contracts".
Similarly "student accommodation", "patient rights".
In these case, 'employee' 'student', and 'patient', are acting as adjectives.
Your second heading is usable, but it needs to be "2022 Hourly Employees' Christmas Fund", indicating the the fund 'belongs' in some way to the employees.
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Employees', surely, since it's for all the employees and not just one! Commented Nov 6, 2022 at 9:40
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It’s NOT a fund that belongs to the employees, that’s why I think the first phrase connotes the correct meaning. We are trying to raise money from the community residents to give to the hourly employees, so I think the flyer title should be: 2022 Hourly Employee Christmas Fund. Other ppl are disagreeing but I don’t know of a grammatical rule to apply to this issue. Commented Nov 6, 2022 at 9:41
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That's why I said "'belongs' in some way". You could also see any number of examples where something that is not in any way 'owned' by the subjects is nonetheless described as if it is.– PRL75Commented Nov 6, 2022 at 9:47
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