On this day – 24 October 1938 – the federal minimum wage became law in the United States. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, aka FLSA, the previous summer that, among other things, created the concept now backed by legal reality that people should get a fair wage for a day’s work.
The FLSA set a maximum 44-hour, seven-day workweek, established a national minimum wage, guaranteed so called time-and-a-half for overtime in some jobs, and outlawed “oppressive child labor.” This was going on as the United Auto Workers were fighting bloody battles with auto industry robber barons over pay and working conditions, as well as the health and safety of its new members. The American middle class was the result.
It’s time to reflect on our history, and it’s also time to un-sheath our swords against the mostly Republican puppets of the robber barons whose forefathers opposed FDR then, and whose descendents now are using globalization and its downward pressure on U.S. wages to break the middle class. Shame on them for not sharing the wealth.
Perhaps no economic issue has been more studied than the minimum wage. Moreover, it is certainly a topic that is rife with myths, falsehoods, political manipulation and, from opponents, the mean spiritedness that the rich have for less wealthy citizens and taxpayers, who ironically are in higher rate tax brackets than the rigged ones the rich inhabit.
President Obama in his last State of the Union address pushed for a boost in the federal minimum wage. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative George Miller (D-CA) then introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour by 2015 in three 95-cent phases, and adjust the minimum wage each year thereafter to keep pace with the rising cost of living. The federal minimum wage for tipped workers – at $2.13 for more than twenty years – would go to 70% of the federal minimum wage.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, the change would affect mainly adults who work long hours. Only 11% of those who would see a raise are younger than age 20 and only 14% work fewer than 20 hours per week. If the minimum wage were increased to $10.10 by 2015, 23% of children in this country would see at least one parent get a raise.
Under this Administration proposal, millions of working families would bring home bigger paychecks, which could help stimulate the lagging U.S. economy. More than half of the workers who would see a raise live in households with an income of less than $50,000 and more than a quarter live in households with an income of more than $50,000 but less than $75,000, according to EPI.
In AutoInformed’s view, the minimum wage is a basic labor standard that rewards work. In addition, as FDR understood, it helps guarantee that growth in the economy is shared by the workforce, not just the owners. Yes, the wealthy Dutch poltroon FDR was a traitor to his upper class roots in the view of many millionaires, but he saved America and saved its free enterprise system by bringing some common sense regulation to our economy.
It is time for a bickering, overfeed, and overpaid Congress – largely millionaires and many mean spirited in the tradition of the people who opposed FDR – to increase the minimum wage.
Exactly. The middle class has been eviscerated over the past two decades, mostly by Republican policies and corporations reaping huge profits under a ridiculously rigged corporate tax structure. A higher minimum wage would put money directly into the pockets of those who need it most, and lower the profits of some of the most abusive anti-labor corporations–WalMart, McDonald’s, Koch Industries, Hobby Lobby. It’s a sad commentary on the United States when the largest employer in this nation pays minimum wage, uses mostly part-time workers and offers virtually no benefits.