1938

• Roosevelt signed the 1938 Federal Fair Labor Standards Act on June 25. It mandated 25 cents an hour as a minimum wage, increasing to 40 cents over seven years, and a maximum 44-hour workweek for any business involved in interstate commerce. The law also prohibited employing children younger than 16 or subjecting those younger than 18 to hazardous working conditions. Domestic employees, professionals and farmers were among the jobs excluded.
  
  

Wage Increase

• The 1949 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act, Public Law 49-393, which included the 1949 Minimum Wage Act, became effective 90 days after Truman signed the legislation. The new law required a minimum wage of 75 cents an hour, affecting an estimated 1.5 million workers. It also allowed employees to file written requests for federal lawsuits to recover unpaid back wages mandated by the act.
  
  

Overtime

• The new law clarified the term "regular rate" used to calculate overtime pay required for working more than 40 hours in a week. It allowed flexibility in paying overtime wages for annual contracts negotiated through collective bargaining. It also included airline and seafood cannery employees in the newly increased minimum wage.
  
  

Speech

• In his Jan. 5, 1949, State of the Union speech to Congress, Truman said the country's minimum wage was "far too low." He proposed a minimum wage of at least 75 cents an hour to maintain the nation's economy at a high level. He also took the opportunity to propose other parts of his "Fair Deal" program, including increased public housing and an expanded Social Security program. Those three elements of the Fair Deal program were the only ones to pass Congress. Proposals such as national medical insurance and civil rights legislation would have to wait until later years.