The Fair Labor Standards Act: Minimum Wage in the 108th Congress

Publication Date: December 2003

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Labor

Type:

Abstract:

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the primary federal statute in the fields of minimum wages, overtime pay, and child labor. In the 108th Congress, legislation has been introduced that would modify the Act in each of these areas and that would extend the Act's minimum wage protections to workers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Some of these proposals are broad and sweeping; others concern technical and narrowly focused issues.

This report deals only with the minimum wage aspects of the Act. Other components of the FLSA are considered in separate CRS products.

Following several decades of discussion and research in academic and policy circles, Congress adopted the FLSA in 1938. However, the Act is a living statute which Congress has variously modified through the years in response to altered public policy and workplace realities. It has undergone major amendment on eight separate occasions, in addition to periodic less extensive adjustments.

Currently, the general minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. There are, however, a number of specialized minima: for example, a sub-minimum wage for youth, special calculation of the rate as it affects tipped employees, a reduced wage structure for persons with disabilities, etc. Early in the 108th Congress, concern with the wage aspects of the Act seem to have focused, largely, upon an increase in the base rate. The most common target seems to be an increase to $6.65 per hour -- usually with a series of step increases. Several bills would extend federal minimum wage protection to the CNMI -- currently covered only by insular wage standards.

Section 13(a) of the FLSA defines a series of exemptions from the Act's otherwise applicable minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. Several proposals of the 108th Congress would amend Section 13(a) to alter the wage/hour treatment of specialized groups of workers: e.g., licensed funeral directors and embalmers, certain engineering consultants, computer services workers, retail sales workers who deal in fireworks and who are employed on a seasonal basis -- with other changes in coverage.

While minimum wage legislation may be narrowly focused, dealing simply with an increase in the federal wage rate, it could also be combined with legislation affecting overtime pay child labor -- and, possibly, with other issues such as tax reduction or other questions of interest to workers or employers. There are no time constraints built into the Act. Therefore, Congress is not required to take up wage/hour legislation at all -- though social and economic pressure (and other policy concerns) could argue for some action with respect to the minimum wage.