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Conceptions Of Fairness And The Fair Labor Standards Act, Seth D. Harris

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

This article uses the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act's minimum wage provisions to examine how statutes that benefit interests that are comparatively weak in the political market become law. The article tracks the history of the American debate over fairness in wages beginning with the demise of slavery through the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 in search of an answer. The search yields two answers. The first answer is that bargaining power is dynamic, not static. The article discusses the socio-economic crises and effective political advocacy by living wage proponents that changed the political …