Fair Labor Standards Act

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FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT

FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT. During the Great Depression, many employees with little bargaining power were subjected to onerous conditions of employment and inadequate pay. In June 1938, Congress passed a bill designed to limit the maximum number of hours that could be required of employees and the minimum wages they could be paid. This legislation, known as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), or the Wages and Hours Act, was the last major piece of New Deal legislation. In general, the FLSA, administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, set minimum wages and maximum hours for all employees manufacturing products that were shipped in interstate commerce. It also established requirements for overtime and restricted child labor. Originally, the act's provisions extended to approximately one-fifth of the working population. Over the years, Congress amended the FLSA to add categories of employees to its coverage and to raise the level of the minimum wage. Effective 1 September 1997, the minimum wage became $5.15 an hour.

When first proposed the bill created controversy for a number of reasons. First, some legislators feared it would violate workers' "liberty of contract." From the 1890s through the 1930s, the Supreme Court carefully evaluated all wages and hours legislation to ensure that such laws did not infringe upon this constitutional guarantee. The liberty of contract doctrine held that in general the government should not be able to set the terms of contracts freely entered into by private parties. The Court allowed statutes designed to protect groups it considered either dependent or vulnerable but invalidated any other wages or hours legislation. For example, in Holden v. Hardy (1898), the Court upheld a state law limiting the working hours of miners. In Lochner v. New York (1905), however, the Court struck down similar legislation regulating bakers' hours on the grounds that bakers were not engaged in an inherently dangerous occupation.

For much of this period, the Court held that the freedom of contract granted to men by the Constitution did not apply to women or children. For example, in Muller v. Oregon (1908), the Court upheld a maximum-hours law for women. After women gained the right to vote in 1920, the Court reversed its position in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923), holding that women's new political rights made them no longer a dependent class. Freedom of contract for both sexes was largely abandoned in the late 1930s, when in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937) the Supreme Court dramatically altered much of its constitutional jurisprudence.

At the beginning of his administration in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wished to propose legislation to guarantee minimum wages and maximum hours and to restrict child labor, but he feared constitutional challenges. In addition, he was aware that such legislation faced opposition by conservatives in Congress. Some conservatives objected to the creation of another New Deal agency. Many southern conservatives feared that the bill's requirements of minimum wages and maximum hours and abolition of child labor would eliminate the competitive advantage that the region possessed because of its generally lower wage rates. Finally, some southern congressmen did not wish to pass legislation that required that black workers receive the same wages as white workers. When the Supreme Court signaled in the Parrish decision that wages and hours legislation was now more likely to be found constitutional, Roosevelt encouraged members of Congress to introduce the bill that became the FLSA.

Nevertheless, some concerns remained as to whether or not the proposed law lay within the scope of congressional commerce power based on Supreme Court precedent. Congress passed the FLSA pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Court interpreted the commerce power of Congress broadly. As a result, in the early twentieth century, Congress began to use its commerce power to achieve certain social purposes. For example, in 1916, Congress outlawed child labor by passing the Child Labor Act, which prohibited transportation of products made with child labor in interstate commerce. The Supreme Court, however, resisted such innovative uses of the commerce power. In Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), the Court held the Child Labor Act unconstitutional as an interference with state regulatory power. The Hammer decision suggested that Congress lacked the power to pass legislation regulating the conditions of labor, including wages or hours. This conclusion was placed in doubt, however, by the Court's adoption in the 1930s of a more tolerant view of economic regulation. When the constitutionality of the FLSA was challenged in United States v. Darby Lumber Company (1941), the Court unanimously upheld the statute, stating that the decision in Hammer v. Dagenhart had been a departure from the Court's other holdings and should be overruled.

After Congress passed the FLSA, questions arose as to which types of work-related activities were covered by the act. One particularly difficult issue was whether or not the act should apply to the underground travel by miners to and from the "working face" of coal mines. In Jewell Ridge Coal Corporation v. Local Number 6167, United Mine Workers of America (1945), a closely divided Court held that the miners should be compensated for their travel time. In response, Congress in 1947 amended the FLSA by enacting the Portal-to-Portal Act, which overturned the Court's decision. Under the Portal-to-Portal Act only work deemed an integral and indispensable part of the employee's principal activities is entitled to compensation.

Congress also passed legislation that covers the federal government as both an employer and a purchaser of goods and services. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 requires that the federal government pay preestablished minimum wages to its employees, and the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act of 1936 requires that parties holding government contracts do the same. In 1963, Congress passed the Federal Equal Pay Act, which provides that men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in any industry engaged in interstate commerce.