What Is The FLSA?

The Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1938 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” legislation. The FLSA is the country’s basic wage and hour law, and can be found at 29 U.S.C. Section 207.

The FLSA sets the “floor” on acceptable wage and hour practices. Employers can have employment practices that are more generous than the FLSA, but cannot have employment practices that are less generous than the FLSA. Even collective bargaining agreements cannot provide lesser benefits than mandated by the FLSA.

The FLSA has several components, the most familiar of which set the country’s minimum wage. The FLSA also has comprehensive overtime provisions, requiring employees to be paid at time and one-half the regular rate of pay for overtime hours worked.

In the 1970’s, Congress extended the FLSA to cover state and local governmental bodies. After a series of contradictory decisions, in 1985 in a decision known as Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the application of the FLSA to cities and counties. The 17 years since the Garcia decision have seen successful lawsuits brought by police officers across the country seeking to have their employers comply with the FLSA.