The Fair Labor Standards Act 1938
The FLSA introduced a maximum 44-hour seven-day workweek, established a national minimum wage, guaranteed time-and-a-half for overtime in some jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors. It applies to employees unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The FLSA was originally written in 1932 by Senator Hugo Black, who later joined the Supreme Court in 1937. Hugo Black's proposal to require employers to adopt a thirty-hour work week met a lot resistance. In 1938 a revised version of the proposal was passed that allowed for an eight-hour day and a forty-hour work week and allowed workers to earn wage for an extra four hours of overtime as well.
The Fair Labor Standards Act regulated wages and hours. Efforts to limit the number of hours a person could work in a week began early in the 1900's. But Congress was not able to adopt the Fair Labor Standards Act until 1938. Although many political leaders were suspicious of federally drawn labor standards, the minimum wage and hour laws are now widely believed to be an important reason to keep many out of poverty. For this and many other reasons it is believed by some to be one of the most important changes of the New Deal.
According to the act, workers must be paid minimum wage and overtime pay must be one-and-a-half times regular pay. Also this act tried to solve issues with child labor. Children under eighteen could not do dangerous jobs. Also children under the age of sixteen could not work at all. There were 700,000 workers affected by the FLSA, and Roosevelt called it the most important piece of New Deal legislation passed since the Social Security Act of 1935.
The Fair Labor Standards Act put the minimum wage at 25 cents an hour in 1938. The maximum workweek was set at forty-four hours for the first year of the act, forty-two for the second year, and forty hours after that. It also allowed seven years to reach the standards of a forty-cent minimum wage and forty-hour maximum work week. By 1943 all workers were covered by the forty-cent minimum. But also wages and hours varied from state to state.
So altogether FLSA helped many Americans During the great depression and is still doing so today. If it were not for the Fair Labor Standards Act employers could pay you any amount they saw fit. So instead of being paid minimum wage like we have now we could be getting paid even lower while employers are benefiting from the money they save on salary. Which would have greatly increased the gap between the Upper, middle, and lower classes. Also that would make most US citizens in the lower class.
Sources
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/flsa1938.htm#.UPhahvLNlNE
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