History of the Fair Labor Standards Act

Minimum Wage

• Beginning in 1912, 15 states established minimum wage laws. In 1923, the Supreme Court ruled that minimum wage laws denied each worker the right to negotiate an individual wage contract and thus violated the right to due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution's Fifth Amendment. Minimum wage was a 1936 presidential campaign issue. President Franklin Roosevelt favored minimum wage and the opposing party's platform rejected it. In 1938, Roosevelt's Fair Labor Standards Act established minimum wage at 25 cents for industrial workers engaged in interstate commerce.

Child Labor

• Children were preferred as factory workers during the 19th century Industrial Revolution. They received lower wages, were easily managed, and were unlikely to strike. In New England in 1832, labor unions first opposed child labor. Massachusetts limited workdays for children to 10 hours in 1842. Various reform movements targeted child labor, with the goal of keeping children in school. Roosevelt championed that goal. The resultant FLSA regulates employment for workers under age 16 and prohibits work during school hours.

Eight-Hour Workday

• By 1880, unions achieved 10-hour factory workdays. They set May 1, 1886, as the deadline for winning an eight-hour workday. Failure to meet that deadline prompted strikes that met with violent retaliation. After 1914, court injunctions could not force strikers back to work. After 1931, new-hires could not be required by an employer to agree not to join unions. However, the 8-hour workday remained elusive until the FLSA required overtime payment for labor that exceeds 40 hours and established a maximum workweek of 44 hours.

Early Changes

• FSLA has been amended to increase minimum wage several times, beginning in 1949. In 1961, FLSA included retail workers whose employers grossed $1 million annually. The threshold was decreased to $500,000 in 1967 and $250,000 in 1969. In 1966, FLSA included public schools, nursing homes, the construction industry, laundries and farms at a threshold of 500 man-days of hired labor annually. In 1974, Congress added federal, state and local government workers to FSLA jurisdiction, but the courts struck down state and local requirements. In 1974, many household domestic workers were included.

Recent Changes

• In 1989, all workers were brought into the jurisdiction of FLSA, and state and local governments were permitted to compensate workers with paid leave rather than overtime pay. In 1990, Congress provided exemption from overtime for high-wage computer workers. In 1996, employers were allowed to pay less than minimum wage during a training period of 90 days for teen employees.