The Daily Alaska empire., 1946-05-02
Minimum Wages
(NeW York Times)

As so often happens in Washington the debate the proposal to extend the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and to increase the minimum wage first to 65 and later to 75 cents an hour has thrown little light on the central questions at issue, but has been mainly concerned with rreevances The Administration has been rightly alarmed by the pos sbity of aodpton of the inflationary Pace farm parity rider but it does not itself appear to have given serious study to the actual effects it's proposed amendments to the law If all the arguments of the sponsors of this legislation sound in principle if wages could be raised by legislative fiat without harmful effect then the problem would be very easy. In fact it would in that be hard to justify bill that raised minimum wages only to 65 75 cents an instead of to $l $2 indefinitely larger sums Wages are based upon productivity Employers cannot pay unskilled labor more than it is worth
 workers services increase an employers profits by only s2O he cannot afford to pay him s3o minimum wage of 75 cents hour would mean wage of $50 for forty-hour week. But Congress cantot make an unskilled worker worth $50 to employer simply by forbdding the employer to him anything less The effect of such legislation may be merely to throw that worker out of employment to halt reduce the kind of production which he was engaged. Thus neither he nor the community is benefited. The argument that higher wage increases the workers producing power" misses the point that if he cannot be employed his producing is reduced from its present level to nothing.
 The first fact to be determined in all minimum wage legislation is what minimum wage a given in dustry can afford to pay No serious consideration is
 
 Senate. The Administration does not even know how many workers getting less than 65 cents an hour how many getting less than 75 cents an hour, and precisely where. these workers It does not know the effect of increasing these would be on the industries concerned. It is acting in the dark, and it is asking Congress to act in the dark.
 If we are going to amend the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act then ought to reconsider that act in far basic manner than the present bill attempts 10 do. Before the present Federal law passed in 1888 many of the States had minimum wage laws Virtually of these attempted to state in the text of the law itself precisely what the minimum wage should be- Instead, they provided for careful investigation by special boards commonly consisting of representatives of employers workers and the public, before minimums fixed in any particular industry. This also been the procedure followed by the boards in Great Britain If this procedure small countries and in States it is obviously much necessary to meet the extremely wide range of conditions the United States. To attempt to fix the same minimum wages in New York and Mississippi is to ignore the realities.
 Another provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act which should be reconsdered is that making it legally mandatory to pay tme-and-a-haH for overtime to all workers regardless of the wage class they in. The effect of this to penaze most the employer who has been paying the highest regular wage rates and to benefit most the workers who have already been getting the highest wages. Thus the employer who pays regular of 75 cents hour is obliged to pay only 371a cents more, or S1.1212, for overtime hours, while employer paying regular rate of s150 an hour becomes legally obliged to pay 75 cents more, or $2.25 hour, for overtime further effect of this legislation is to make law that originally regarded applying only to submargina workers apply in fact to practically all workers It would more sensible to fix minimum overtime rate 50 per cent higher than the minimum regular rate, and allow any figure above that to be determined by col Joctiuo borpo poi11ipp