Thread by @ErikLoomis

This Day in Labor History: June 25, 1938. FDR signs the Fair Labor Standards Act, creates federal minimum wage, overtime pay after 40 hours, bans most child labor, etc. Let's talk about this groundbreaking legislation on one of the greatest days in American workers' history.

Sweeping laws to regulate wages and hours had been bandied around for some time, including a bill sponsored by Alabama senator Hugo Black in 1933 to reduce the workweek to 30 hours.

Black continued to push for some kind of comprehensive labor regulation bill, although against significant Congressional opposition from conservatives.

Hugo Black himself was a tremendously complicated man, a KKK member who sponsored the greatest labor legislation in history, then went on to routinely rule against segregation as a Supreme Court justice. Wrote a bit on him here.

lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/01/erik-v…

Roosevelt campaigned on wage and hour legislation in 1936. In 1937, a new fight was undertaken for such a bill and it took nearly a year of contentious negotiations to make it happen. On May 24, 1937, FDR had the bill introduced through friendly congressmen.

The original bill included a Fair Labor Standards Board to mediate labor issues, and a 40 cent an hour minimum wage for a 40 hour week, as well as the prohibition of “oppressive child labor” for goods shipped between states.

FDR told Congress, “A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling worker’s wages or stretching workers’ hours.”

The administration tried to stress that this was actually a pro-business measure. Commissioner of Labor Statistics Isador Lubin said businesses surviving the Depression were not the most efficient, but the ones who most ruthlessly exploited labor into longer hours and lower wages

Only by halting this cutthroat exploitation could a more rational and well-regulated economy result. That was the goal of much New Deal legislation, going back to its beginning in 1933.

Organized labor was split. Many labor leaders believed in it wholeheartedly. But both AFL head William Green and CIO leader John L. Lewis supported it only for the lowest wage workers, fearing a minimum wage would become a maximum wage for better paid labor.

This reflected the long-standing mistrust of government by labor, lessons hard-learned over the past half-century, but ones that could get in the way of understanding the potential of the New Deal. They were wrong in 1938, but we can see how the state can crush labor today.

But all this happened while FDR was also engaged in his court-packing scheme. The embarrassing failure of that idea threatened the FLSA’s passage.

It was quickly moved through the Senate but the House stalled, leading to it taking over a year to make it through Congress.

It was only after Claude Pepper beat off an anti-New Deal challenger in the Florida primary that enough southern Congressmen would vote for the bill for it to pass, even in somewhat weakened form.

The bill FDR finally signed over covered about 25 percent of the labor force at that time. It banned the worst forms of child labor, set the labor week at 44 hours, and created the federal minimum wage, set at 25 cents an hour.

Of course, corporate leaders howled about the 25 cent minimum wage. Roosevelt told Americans, “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.”

The minimum wage had been a major project of labor reformers for decades. During the Progressive Era, reformers had made some progress, but the Supreme Court ruled a minimum wage for women unconstitutional in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital in 1923, killing the movement’s momentum.

The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 set an important precedent for federal regulation over wages and hours, but the Supreme Court overruled this in 1935, leading to the National Labor Relations Act and FDR’s attack upon the Supreme Court as an antiquated institution.

Child labor had been the bane of the country for a century. Children were often expected to work through most of American history; they had always worked on farms or in the apprenticeships that defined pre-industrial labor.

But in the factory systems, children were employed explicitly to undermine wages and increase profits.

Organized labor and reformers had fought to end child labor for decades, with industries such as apparel and timber leading the opposition to it. This largely, although not entirely, ended with the FLSA, to the benefit of every American.

So this was great. But the only way the law could get through the Senate was to make sure that most black workers weren't covered. The South would never give it the necessary votes otherwise. So most traditional black labor was excluded--agriculture, domestic labor, nurses.

This is critical for a number of reasons. First, yes, the law reflected and contributed to racism in this country. It also simply never would have been passed otherwise. Not in 1938. Southern senators would have filibustered or killed it in committee.

This matters for us today a lot. First, today we talk about compromise half-measures that Democrats pass, like the ACA. OK. But every single social and economic program that has passed in our history has been a compromise sellout measure. Every one.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the National Labor Relations Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, Affordable Care Act, etc., etc. All required compromises that undermined their effectiveness to pass our conservative dominated political system.

Today, when people complain about Democrats, they point to this earlier legislation as what REAL DEMOCRATS can do. The problem is they know nothing about how these laws were passed and how so many people were excluded. And lefties who get a lot of attention say these things.

It's absolutely true that the ACA was heavily compromised. So was the Fair Labor Standards Act. The answer to all the workers of color being excluded wasn't to angrily mutter about sellout Democrats. It was to continue fighting so that these laws covered more workers.

And there's no beating around the bush--the exclusion passed in 1938 still matter today. Farmworkers remain among the most exploited labor in the United States today. The federal government still has no child age limit on farm work and only 33 states have created one.

Most states that exempt farm work from child labor laws are in the South, but among the other states is Rhode Island. Those state laws are limited. Washington allows children as young as 12 to pick berries, cucumbers, spinach, and other groups when school is not in session.

Workers under the age of 16 are prohibited from hazardous jobs on farms, but who is checking that? Not enough inspectors, that’s for sure.

Farmworkers under the age of 20 only receive $4.25 an hour for the first 90 days of their work. In short, there are still huge gaps in FLSA coverage and in today’s political climate, they are more likely to grow, not shrink.

The Fair Labor Standards Act was significantly expanded over the years. Each increase in the minimum wage is an amendment to the FLSA.

In 1949, Harry Truman expanded its reach to airline and cannery workers. JFK expanded it to retail and service employees. The 1963 Equal Pay Act expanded its reach to require equal pay for equal work for women and men.

Even if we didn't live in a nation determined to repeal what protections we have for workers, we would still have a lot of fights to ensure FLSA protections for all workers. And those divides are still heavily racialized.

It's also worth nothing that the Fair Labor Standards Act was the last important piece of New Deal legislation to pass. It was struggle to death to protect workers in a very brief moment when that could pass Congress. A year later, no way this would have passed.

Yet, despite its flaws and how it excluded most black workers in the South, the Fair Labor Standards Act is still something to celebrate. Minimum wage! No child labor! Overtime! These are huge victories that gave millions of workers a more dignified life.

Of course, employers have spent 80 years finding ways around these laws. Welcome to being reclassified as salaried work! Or the 37 hour week! The problem is that the nation hasn't passed comprehensive labor reform in 80 years. And it ain't going to happen for many more, sadly.

So this central moment in our history has shaped our lives and continues to do so, even as we face new and horrible challenges. I discuss all this complicated history in my new book, American History in Ten Strikes. You can preorder it for October!

amazon.com/History-Americ…

I will also note that it is my own anniversary. I'm not saying I intentionally got married on the anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But let's just say no one had to work overtime with time and a half pay at my wedding!

Back tomorrow with another of the critical moments of American labor history: The Pullman Strike. Preview: Grover Cleveland sucks.