"A fair day's pay for a fair day's work."-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing the United States Congress in 1937 explaining the reason for requesting Congress to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In an age of global economic change and dramatic alteration of the American work force, the Fair Labor Standards Act still stands as the preeminent tool for enforcing and protecting the rights and wages of employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act is a federal law that requires employers to keep accurate records of time worked by its employees, to pay employees a minimum wage and to pay employees an overtime premium of time-and-a-half for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek. It also prohibits oppressive child labor.

The FLSA was a landmark law in the Nation's social and economic development.   When the FLSA was passed in 1938, the United States Congress announced that the public policy of the United States is to provide for a minimum standard of living for health, efficiency and general well being of workers, to promote the free flow of goods in commerce and to eliminate unfair methods of competition in business. The purpose of the Fair Labor Standards Act is to correct the unhealthy business conditions and deplorable conditions for workers that Congress found existing in United States. 

Requiring employers to pay an overtime premium promotes the health, efficiency and general well-being of workers by making it less profitable for employers to make employees do the work of two or more people. Requiring employees to work excessive hours keeps workers away from their homes and their families, and can cause health and other problems. The Fair Labor Standards Act does not limit the amount of hours of business can make employee's work -- it just requires them to pay a premium for the excess time, and encourages employers to employ enough employees to conduct the work of the business. 

Payroll is often one of the single largest costs of a business. Companies that violate the Act gain an unfair advantage over companies that comply with it putting pressure on all companies to find ways to violate the act so that they can compete with the non-complying companies. The United States Department of Labor estimates that 70% of employers are not complying with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The FLSA is the single most important law promoting the social well-being and standard of living of people who live in the United States. Even though the act has been law since 1938, more employers are violating it than ever before. The act allows employees to bring their own lawsuits against employers who violate the law. The number of wage and hour class actions filed in the federal courts has more than doubled from 2001 to 2006. Some employers are as creative as ever and try to find ways to avoid the law. Employer groups call their fight against enforcement of the FLSA a “war” and have declared to find ways to end employee challenges.

Many employers are now arguing that the purposes of the fair labor standards act are a quaint remnant of the last century, and just should not apply to the 21st-century "digital" workplace -- where workers are electronically tied to their jobs and have the capability of doing their employers business for all of their waking hours. Employees are even doing business for their employers electronically, while on vacation, or weekends and even during meals -- depriving them of their families and their families of them. Even though their jobs are designed to be more than 40-hour jobs, they receive the same pay regardless of how long they work. 

In the 21st Century workplace, employers act quickly and without notice to layoff employees to "enhance shareholder value” often sending those jobs from the United States to third world countries. Many people are without jobs, and the people who still have jobs do not want to complain to their employers -- fearing that they will be the next to be terminated. Many employees have no idea that their employer is violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.

A law that promotes a minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and the general well-being of workers is just as relevant in the modern day world of "maximizing shareholder value." -- where the workers wear coats and ties -- as it was a century ago in the world of oppressive child labor, sweatshops, and smokestacks.

Businesses will always have pressure to get more for less from employees. Family values and the general well-being of workers will always be important enough to protect in the United States.

This country has had enough of the "class wars" of the 21^st century.   A corporate "war" on employees is the last thing our country needs to move progressively through the 21^st century. Corporations and their employees need to focus more on the values of the 20^th century that made the United States the strongest country and the envy of the world -- cooperation between corporations and people, visionary leadership and a "fair day's pay for a fair day's work."