In 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the Wages and Hours bill. Next to the Social Security Act, FDR called this the most far-reaching, and far-sighted program for workers that America or any other country has ever adopted. This build introduced the forty-hour work week, established a national minimum wage, guaranteed time and half overtime pay, and prohibited 'oppressive child labor'. The initial minimum wage, was 25 cents an hour, or $11 per week. In 2012 dollars, that would be just under $4 per hour, or about $160 per week. In June of 1938, FDR outlined this bill in one of his fireside chats. In this chat, he called out those who decried the dangers of establishing a minimum wage. He referred to them as "calamity-howling executive".
"Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you—using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions-/that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives heartily disagree."
Earlier that year in 1938, FDR urged congress to take action to establish a minimum wage. FDR told congress that wages and hour legislation was an essential par of economic recovery, and had the support of the overwhelming majority of the people who expressed themselves through the ballot box. In other words, FDR considered his re-election to be a mandate for establishing a wages and hours bill. FDR tied the legislation directly to economic recovery. Low wages hampered the ability for local government to provide proper services. Low income meant low taxes. Low taxes, meant poor education facilities and poor health conditions. Here are the words Franklin D. Roosevelt used in his 1938 annual address to congress:
"There are many communities in the United States where the average family income is pitifully low. It is in those communities that we find the poorest educational facilities and the worst conditions of health. Why? It is not because they are satisfied to live as they do. It is because those communities have the lowest per capita wealth and income; therefore, the lowest ability to pay taxes; and, therefore, inadequate functioning of local government.
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Wage and hour legislation, therefore, is a problem which is definitely before this Congress for action. It is an essential part of economic recovery. It has the support of an overwhelming majority of our people in every walk of life. They have expressed themselves through the ballot box."
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15517
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15662
http://www.ufcwaction.org/files/2013/06/FLSA-Signing.jpg
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