Source: https://joeroselaw.com/2015/12/fair-labor-standards-act-of-1938-maximum-struggle-for-a-minimum-wage/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 20:31:58+00:00

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Forty years later, a distinguished news commentator asked incredulously: “My God! 25 cents an hour! Why all the fuss?” President Roosevelt expressed a similar sentiment in a “fireside chat” the night before the signing. He warned: “Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, …tell you…that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”2 In light of the social legislation of 1978, Americans today may be astonished that a law with such moderate standards could have been thought so revolutionary.
A switch in time. Wage-hour legislation was a campaign issue in the 1936 Presidential race. The Democratic platform called for higher labor standards, and, in his campaign, Roosevelt promised to seek some constitutional way of protecting workers. He tried to pave the way for such legislation in his speeches and new conferences in which he spoke of the breakdown of child labor provisions, minimum wages, and maximum hour standards after the demise of the NRA codes.
However, Roosevelt’s metaphorical maverick fell in step. On “White Monday,” March 29, 1937, the Court reversed its course when it decided the case of West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish.14 Elsie Parrish, a former chambermaid at the Cascadian Hotel in Wenatchee, Wash., sued for $216.19 in back wages, charging that the hotel had paid her less than the State minimum wage. In an unexpected turn-around, Justice Owen Roberts voted with the four-man liberal minority to uphold the Washington minimum wage law.
I wish you could do something to help us girls….We have been working in a sewing factory,… and up to a few months ago we were getting our minimum pay of $11 a week… Today the 200 of us girls have been cut down to $4 and $5 and $6 a week.
New York, Random House, 1936), pp. 624-25.
Justice Roberts’ “Big Switch” is an important event in American legal history. It is also a turning point in American social history, for it marked a new legal attitude toward labor standards. To be sure, validating a single State law was a far cry from upholding general Federal legislation, but the Parrish decision encouraged advocates of fair labor standards to work all the harder to develop a bill that might be upheld by the Supreme Court.
An ardent advocate. No top government official worked more ardently to develop legislation to help underpaid workers and exploited child laborers than Secretary Frances Perkins. Almost all her working life, Perkins fought for pro-labor legislation. To avoid the sometime pitfall of judicial review, she consulted legal experts in forming legislation. Her autobiographical account of her relations with President Roosevelt is filled with the names of lawyers with whom she discussed legislation: Felix Frankfurter, Thomas Corcoran, Gerard Reilly, Benjamin Cohen, Charles Wyzanski, and many others both within and outside Government.
Earlier Government groundwork. One of the bills that Perkins had “locked” in the bottom drawer of her desk was used before the 1937 “Big Switch.” The bill proposed using the purchasing power of the Government as an instrument for improving labor standards. Under the bill Government contractors would have to agree to pay the “prevailing wage” and meet other labor standards. The idea had been tried in World War I to woo worker support for the war. Then, President Hoover reincarnated the “prevailing wage” and fair standards criteria as conditions for bidding for the construction of public buildings. This act — the Davis-Bacon Act — in expanded form stands as a bulwark of labor standards in the construction industry.
Roosevelt and Perkins tried to make model employers of government contractors in all fields, not just construction. They were dismayed to find that, except in public construction, the Federal Government actually encouraged employers to exploit labor because the Government had to award every contract to the lowest bidder. In 1935, approximately 40 percent of government contractors, employing 1.5 million workers, cut wages below and stretched hours above the standards developed under the NRA.
The bill — the second that Perkins had “tucked” away — was a general fair labor standards act. To cope with the danger of judicial review, Perkins’ lawyers had taken several constitutional approaches so that, if one or two legal principles were invalidated, the bill might still be accepted. The bill provided for minimum-wage boards which would determine, after public hearing and consideration of cost-of-living figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whether wages in particular industries were below subsistence levels.
Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, a champion of a 30-hour workweek, agreed to sponsor the Administration bill on this subject in the Senate, while Representative William P. Connery of Massachusetts introduced corresponding legislation in the House. The Black-Connery bill had wide Public support, and its path seemed smoothed by arrangements for a joint hearing by the labor committees of both Houses.
Generally, the bill provided for a 40-cent-an-hour minimum wage, a 40-hour maximum workweek, and a minimum working age of 16 except in certain industries outside of mining and manufacturing. The bill also proposed a five-member labor standards board which could authorize still higher wages and shorter hours after review of certain cases.
Organized labor supported the bill but was split on how strong it should be. Some leaders, such as Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and David Dubinsky of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, supported a strong bill. In fact, when Southern congressmen asked for the setting of lower pay for their region, Dubinsky’s union suggested lower pay for Southern congressmen. But William Green of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and John L. Lewis of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), on one of the rare occasions when they agreed, both favored a bill which would limit labor standards to low-paid and essentially unorganized workers. Based on some past experiences, many union leaders feared that a minimum wage might become a maximum and that wage boards would intervene in areas which they wanted reserved for labor-management negotiations. They were satisfied when the bill was amended to exclude work covered by collective bargaining.
An angry President Roosevelt decided to press again for passage of the Black-Connery bill. Having lost popularity and split the Democratic Party in his battle to “pack” the Supreme Court, Roosevelt felt that attacking abuses of child labor and sweatshop wages and hours was a popular cause that might reunite the party. A wage-hour, child-labor law promised to be a happy marriage of high idealism and practical politics.
I now hope and urge that these Members will keep faith with me, as I have kept faith with them, and sign the petition . . . we are approaching Thanksgiving Day, . . . I do not see how any Member of this House can enjoy his Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow if he fails to put his name to that petition this afternoon.
With victory within grasp, the bill became a battle-ground in the war raging between the AFL and the CIO. The AFL accused the Roosevelt Administration of favoring industrial over craft unions and opposed wage-board determination of labor standards for specific industries. Accordingly, the AFL fought for a substitute bill with a flat 40-cent-an-hour minimum wage and a maximum 40-hour week.
Reworking the bill. In the meantime, Department of Labor lawyers worked on a new bill. Privately, Roosevelt had told Perkins that the length and complexity of the bill caused some of its difficulties. “Can’t it be boiled down to two pages?” he asked. Lawyers trying to simplify the bill faced the problem that, although legal language makes legislation difficult to understand, bills written in simple English are often difficult for the courts to enforce. And because the wage-hour, child-labor bill had been drafted with the Supreme Court in mind, Solicitor Labor Gerard Reilly could not meet the President’s two-page goal; however, he succeeded in cutting the bill from 40 to 10 pages.
Roosevelt and Perkins prepared for rugged opposition. Roosevelt put pressure on Congressmen who had ridden his coattails to election victory in 1936 and who then knifed New Deal legislation. Perkins added to her staff Rufus Pole, a young lawyer, to follow the bill through Congress. Pole worked resourcefully pinpointed the issues that bothered some Congressmen, and identified a large number of Senators and Representatives who could be counted on to vote favorably.
Norton appointed Representative Robert Ramspeck of Georgia to head a subcommittee to bridge the gap between various proposals. The subcommittee’s efforts resulted in the Ramspeck compromise which Perkins felt “contained the bare essentials she could support.”35 The compromise retained the 40-cent minimum hourly wage and the 40-hour maximum workweek. It did not provide for an administrator as had the previous bill which had been voted back to the committee by the House. Instead, the compromise allowed for a five-member wage board which would be less powerful than those proposed by the Black-Connery bill.
Braving the floor battle. Proponents of the wage-hour, child-labor bill pressed the attack. They continued to point to “horror stories.” One Congressman quoted a magazine article entitled “All Work and No Pay” which told how, in a company that paid wages in scrip for use in the company store, pay envelopes contained nothing for a full week’s work after the deduction of store charges.
Partly because of Southern protests, provisions of the act were altered so that the minimum wage was reduced to 25 cents an hour for the first year of the act. Southerners gained additional concessions, such as a requirement that wage administrators consider lower costs of living and higher freight rates in the South before recommending wages above the minimum.
A resulting compromise modified the authority of the administrator in the Department of Labor.
The bill was voted upon May 24, 1938, with a 314-to-97 majority. After the House had passed the bill, the Senate-House Conference Committee made still more changes to reconcile differences. During the legislative battles over fair labor standards, members of Congress had proposed 72 amendments. Almost every change sought exemptions, narrowed coverage, lowered standards, weakened administration, limited investigation, or in some other way worked to weaken the bill.
Jonathan Grossman was the Historian for the U.S. Department of Labor. Henry Guzda assisted. This article originally appeared in the Monthly Labor Review of June 1978. The final section, titled “The act as law” and containing dated material, has been omitted in the electronic version.
1. The New York Times, June 27, 28, 1938; Harry S. Kantor, “Two Decades of the Fair Labor Standards Act,” Monthly Labor Review, October 1958, pp. 1097-98.
2. Franklin Roosevelt, Public Papers and Address, Vol. VII (New York, Random House, 1937), p.392.
3. Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918); Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 262 U.S. 525 (1923).
4. The proper initials for the Law are NIRA. The initials for the National Recovery Administration created by the act as NRA. Following a common practice, the initials NRA are used here for both the law and the administration.
5. Roosevelt, Public Papers, II (June 16, 1933), p.246.
6. Roosevelt, Public Papers, II (July 24 and 27, 1933), pp. 301, 308-12.
7. Roosevelt, Public Papers, II (July 9 and 24, 1933), pp. 275, 99; Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York, Viking Press, 1946); pp. 204-08.
8. Schechter Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495(1935).
9. Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt (Boston, Mass., Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1960), pp. 277-83; Roosevelt, Public Papers, IV (May 29, 1935), pp. 198-221; John W. Chambers, “The Big Switch: Justice Roberts and the Minimum-Wage Cases,” Labor History, Vol. X, Winter 1969, pp.49-52.
10. Morehead v. Tipaldo, 298 U.S. 587 (1936).
11. Ironically, like the four Schechter brothers in the NRA case who went broke, Tipaldo also suffered financially. “My customers wouldn’t give my drivers their wash,” he lamented. Columnist Heywood Broun quipped. “Those who live by the chisel will die under the hammer.” Chambers, “Big Switch,” p. 57.
12. Chambers, “Big Switch,” pp. 54-58.
13. Roosevelt, Public Papers, VI (Feb. 5 1937), pp. 51-59; VI (Mar. 4, 1937), p. 116; George Martin, Madam Secretary Frances Perkins(Boston Mass., Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1976), pp. 388-90.
14. West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937).
15. Chambers, “Big Switch,” pp. 44, 73; Robert P. Ingalls, “New York and the Minimum-Wage Movement, 1933-1937,” Labor History, Vol. XV, Spring 1974, pp. 191-97.
16. Perkins, Roosevelt, p. 152.
17. Perkins, Roosevelt, pp. 248-49, 252-53; Roosevelt, Public Papers, V(Jan.` 3, 1936), p. 15; Jonathan Grossman with Gerard D. Reilly, Solicitor of Labor, Oct. 22, 1965.
18. 25th Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1937 (U.S. Department of Labor), pp. 34-35; Herbert C. Morton, Public Contracts and Private Wages: Experience Under the Walsh-Healey Act(Washington, D.C., The Brookings Institution, 1965), pp. 7-10; The Department of Labor (New York, Praeger Publishers, 1973), pp. 19-20, 211-13.
19. Letter from Thomas Corcoran to Jonathan Grossman, Ap. 10, 1978.
20. Perkins, Roosevelt, pp. 254-57; Roosevelt, Public Papers, V(Jan. 7, 1937); Jeremy P. Felt, “The Child Labor Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act,” Labor History , Vol. XI, Fall 1970, pp. 474-75; Interview, Jonathan Grossman with Gerard D. Reilly, Solicitor of Labor, Oct. 22, 1965.
21. Roosevelt, Public Papers, VI(May 24, 1937), pp. 209-14.
22. Record of the Discussion before the U.S. Congress on the FLSA of 1938, I.(U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics)(Washington, GAO, 1938), pp.20-21.
23. Hearings to Provide for the Establishment of Fair Labor Standards in Employments in and Affecting Interstate Commerce and for Other Purposes, Vol. V.(1937). (U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Education and Labor, 75th Cong., 1st sess), pp. 383-84.
24. Isador Lubin, Testimony, Hearings to Provide Fair Labor Standards(1937), pp.309-10.
25. Record of Discussion of FLSA of 1938, I(U.S. Department of Labor), pp.38, 115, 124.
26. Perkins, Roosevelt,pp. 257-59; Paul Douglas and Joseph Hackman, “Fair Labor Standards Act, I,” “Political Science Quarterly Vol. LIII, December 1938, pp. 500-03, 508; The New York Times, Aug. 18, 1937.
27. Roosevelt, Public Papers, VI (Oct. 4, 1937, Oct. 12, 1937, Nov. 15, 1937), pp. 404, 428-29, 496.
28. Mrs.Norton replaced Representative Connery as chair of the House Labor Committee after his death.
29. Record of Discussion of FLSA of 1938, (U.S. Department of Labor), (1937), p. 415.
30. The New York Times, Dec. 13, 1937; Douglas and Hackman, “FLSA,” pp.508-11.
31. Perkins, Roosevelt, p. 261.
32. Roosevelt, Public Papers, VII (Jan. 3, 1938),p.6.
33. The New York Times, Jan. 5, Feb. 16, May 9, 1938.
34. Perkins, Roosevelt, p. 261.
35. Roosevelt, public Papers, VII (Aug. 16, 1938), pp. 488-89; Perking, Roosevelt, pp. 262-63.
36. Roosevelt, Public Papers, VI(May 24, 1937), pp. 215; Perking, Roosevelt pp. 262-63.
37. Perking, Roosevelt, p.263; Roosevelt, Public Papers, VII (Aug. 16, 1938), p.489.
38. Roosevelt, Public Papers, VII(Apr. 30, 1938), pp.333-34.
39. The New York Times, May 6, 7, 1938; Perking, Roosevelt, pp.263-64 (Perking makes an error in the date of Lister Hill’s primary victory); Jonathan Grossman and James Anderson, interview with Clara Beyer, Nov, 5, 1965.
40. Record of Discussion of FLSA of 1938. V (U.S. Department of Labor), p. 873.
41. “Interview with Clara Beyer, No. 25, 1965; U.S. Record of Discussion of FLSA of 1938. V (U.S. Department of Labor), pp. 873, 915, 929.
42. Record of Discussion of FLSA of 1938. V (U.S. Department of Labor), p. 902.
43. Roosevelt, Public Papers, VI (May 24, 1937), pp. 214-16.

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