FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT

The Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the Wages and Hours bill, was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 25, 1938. The Fair Labor Standards Act mandated minimum wage, maximum weekly hours, and child labor standards for workers engaged in interstate commerce. The law represented a departure from the policy of strict voluntarism that organized labor had supported prior to the Great Depression. However, continuing concerns on the part of American Federation of Labor (AFL) leaders about the state determining wage standards helped to shape a law that fell short of the aim of those New Dealers who wanted to require employers to pay a "living wage."

The Progressive era had witnessed various attempts by individual states to regulate working conditions for women, children, and those involved in hazardous jobs. Judicial hostility to any interference with "liberty of contract" and union fears of government intervention becoming a substitute for workers' self-organization severely limited the scope and effectiveness of such efforts prior to the Great Depression. The federal government did not become directly involved in trying to enforce minimum wage and maximum hours standards throughout the economy until the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was established in 1933. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1935 that the National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional, Roosevelt considered offering a labor standards bill to salvage the wages and hours provisions of the industry codes set up under the NRA, but he waited until after his reelection to begin pressing Congress to pass such legislation.

New Deal lawyers Benjamin Cohen and Thomas Corcoran prepared the original version of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which in May 1937 was introduced by Hugo Black in the Senate and by William Connery in the House. The Black-Connery bill called for fixing an unstated minimum wage (widely assumed to be forty cents an hour) and a maximum hours standard (assumed to be forty hours per week) for workers involved in interstate commerce. Workers involved in agriculture or holding administrative or supervisory positions were deemed "exempt" from coverage under the law, as were workers in firms with fewer than six employees. Overtime work was to be paid at a rate of time and a half. In addition, the bill provided for the establishment of a five-person Labor Standards Board with discretionary power to set higher wage and lower hours requirements for individual industries in which there was a demonstrated "inadequacy or ineffectiveness of facilities for collective bargaining." Implicit in such a provision was the hope that the law would contribute to the establishment of "living wage" standards. New Deal proponents of the law saw the forty-forty standard itself as a means of raising the wage level and boosting the level of employment, and thereby contributing to efforts to end the Depression. The proposal also included a ban on child labor.

In spite of Roosevelt's backing, the Black-Connery bill faced tough going in Congress. The proposal encountered stiff opposition from the nation's business leaders and also failed to win the support of the AFL, whose leaders feared allowing a government board to exercise such wide authority over wages. The congressional battle over the Fair Labor Standards Act lasted fourteen months, and the law that finally emerged was significantly different from Cohen and Corcoran's original draft. In response to the concerns of the AFL and the secretary of labor, the independent and potentially powerful Labor Standards Board was eliminated. Administration of the law was given to the Department of Labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act set an initial minimum wage of only twenty-five cents, while providing for the rate to go to forty cents in seven years. The law set an initial weekly hours standard of forty-four, but called for a reduction to forty over three years. Although the law allowed individual industries to reach the forty-forty standard before the end of the phase-in period, the limited flexibility in the final bill was intended primarily to make it possible for southern employers to maintain regional differentials for several more years.

The Fair Labor Standards Act was path-breaking legislation that immediately improved wages for approximately 300,000 workers while reducing hours for more than one million employees. Yet, the standards established by the law were so low that full-time workers receiving the law's protection could still have incomes that would leave them in poverty. Subsequent increases in the minimum wage have only marginally improved this situation. Moreover, by excluding agricultural labor and domestic workers, who were not considered to be engaged in interstate commerce, the law failed to provide any benefits to large numbers of African-American and women workers.

See Also: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING; GUFFEY-SNYDER ACT OF 1935; GUFFEY-VINSON ACT OF 1937.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Douglas, Paul H., and Joseph Hackman. "The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: I." Political Science Quarterly 53 (1938): 491–515.

Douglas, Paul H., and Joseph Hackman. "The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: II." Political Science Quarterly 54 (1939): 29–55.

Forsythe, John S. "Legislative History of the Fair Labor Standards Act." Contemporary Problems 6 (1939): 464–490.

Hart, Vivien. Bound by Our Constitution: Women, Workers, and the Minimum Wage. 1994.

Paulsen, George E. A Living Wage for the Forgotten Man: The Quest for Fair Labor Standards 1933–1941. 1996.

Larry G. Gerber