History of The Minimum Wage

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History of The Minimum Wage

November 18, 2015 08:54:12 pm

The term “New Deal” came from a speech [LOC backgrounder] delivered by democratic Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. At the time it was a rather unclear term that ultimately meant that the government should assume a stronger role in the function of economic regulation. After his inauguration as president in 1933, Roosevelt proposed and the then Congress enacted the “New Deal” in an effort to deliver relief to the unemployed and those in danger of losing their farms, homes, and businesses.

Beginning in the early 20th century, the Supreme Court created major blockades [DOL backgrounder] towards wage-hour and minimum wage laws. In Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, the Court voided the District of Columbia law that set minimum wages for women and held that federal minimum wage legislation for women was an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract, as protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. In 1933, under the “New Deal” program, President Roosevelt’s advisers helped develop a National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). The act suspended antitrust laws so that industries could enforce fair-trade codes leading to less competition and higher wages.

The minimum wage was originally introduced by Congress [DOL backgrounder] in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA [JURIST backgrounder], among other things, established the minimum wage [UC Davis backgrounder], overtime pay, record-keeping, and youth employment standards affecting those employees in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments. The FLSA initially set the minimum wage at $0.25 USD per hour for covered workers. Since then it has been raised 22 different times, with the most recent increase effective as of July 24, 2009. This increase covered nonexempt workers and entitled them to a minimum wage of not less than $7.25 USD per hour. The minimum wage previous to that was $5.15 USD per hour. After 40 hours of work per week, overtime pay at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay is required. In 1938, the FLSA applied to industries whose employment collectively represented about 20 percent of the labor force but since then the wage now covers roughly 130 million workers or 84 percent of the labor force.

Currently, Washington state has the highest minimum wage [Washington state website], which in January 2015 was raised from $9.32 USD per hour to $9.47 USD per hour. The average minimum wage in the United States currently stands at $7.57 per hour. In addition, New York announced [Reuters] this past July that it intends to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $15/hour by the end of 2018 and for workers in the rest of the state by 2021. This decision came as a result of a unanimous vote from the New York Wage Board.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.