Or give the “cheap labor” capitalists an inch and they’ll find a way to steal a mile.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) was groundbreaking. Among its provisions were 1) forty hour work week 2) time and half pay over forty hours per week 3) minimum wage 4) prohibited various forms of child labor. One obvious shortcoming was that adjustments to the minimum wage required Congressional action and Presidential approval. That may have been one of the “pragmatic,” bipartisan compromises to set the initial minimum wage close to what employers were already paying “unskilled” labor. Congress could then adjust it upwards as the economy grew and unemployment fell.
It took thirty years for the minimum wage to reach a poverty threshold for a family of four. It has been going in the wrong direction ever since. Now it’s at the poverty threshold for one parent and one child. The significant decline began with the Reagan administration and Democratic politicians straddling between the GOP and New Deal Democrats.
However, before Reagan and the DLC, there was another not so New Dealish Democrat. Carter and the Democratic Congress were only somewhat regressive on the minimum wage, but they supported some deregulation of the New Deal and abandoned acting on another FLSA provision. One that with not much trickery has added money to the pockets of the wealthy instead of the not wealthy.
The FLSA forty hour/week limitation without overtime pay applied to workers. Certain categories of employees that were not considered vulnerable to exploitation, such as professionals, executives, managers, were exempt. Generally salaried employees at higher compensation levels. Unlike modern Democrats, some New Dealers better understood how the plutocrats operated. The test for defining exempt employees wasn’t limited to a job title but also a minimum annual salary. The authority for adjusting that minimum salary over time was delegated to the POTUS.
In 1975, the Ford Administration raised the exempt salary minimum to $13,000. And there it stood until the Bush Administration raised it $23,660.
What was $13,000 worth in 1975? Not so much in SF except in comparison w/minimum wage. (I was there and still remember.) It was approximately three times the minimum wage, but that was also a time when income inequality was much lower. It was like the first rung on the professional ladder. The one after advancing up from a trainee status. “Exempt” employees had some status – no time clocks or routine detailed time sheets. Report “time off” and not “time on” that was assumed to average forty hours/week
Did workers that were classified as “exempt” know that it included an income threshold? Doubtful. I didn’t. And by the time I did any salary administration, all of the exempt employees were earning in excess of an inflation adjusted floor for that classification. But I didn’t work in a “cheap labor” industry.
Exploitation of that flat salary minimum for exempt employees likely began in the early 1980s. Would have been less operational thirty years later when it was raised to $23,660 and has been operational since then. Give the workers a management title and they’ll work more hours and not ask for much much of a raise.
As the rules stand now, an assistant manager at a fast food restaurant who spends 95 percent of his (or her) time cooking fries, running a cash register, sweeping floors, and moving supplies into and out of the freezer can be denied any overtime pay and work 60 or 70 hours a week if his salary is at least $23,660 a year. Because he is exempt, the hourly rate of his salary can fall below the minimum wage; “executives” are excluded from minimum-wage protection, too.
That explains why we see more and more people identified as managers. That view themselves as “middle class.” Yet, they can’t understand why that status doesn’t translate to higher income and job security. This solves what has been a seeming mystery to me. How did so many relatively low income and poor people in this country come to believe they are middle-class and don’t relate to being a “worker.”
Another lesson in “framing” to make stealing from the “have nots” child’s play.
