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State labor legislation
enacted in 1981
Richard R. Nelson
State labor legislation passed in 1981 covered a wide variety of subjects,1 including such traditional fields as minimum wage, prevailing wage, child labor, job discrimination, and regulation of private employment agencies. At the same time, new interest was shown in problems of "whistleblower" protection and of plant closings and resulting mass layoffs.2
Minimum wage rates were increased in 26 jurisdictions last year, primarily resulting from previously adopted wage escalation schedules, although a few increases were approved this year. Eighteen jurisdictions have a minimum rate for some or all occupations equal to or exceeding the $3.35-per-hour Federal standard that took effect January 1, 1981, the last scheduled increase prescribed by the 1977 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Two more States will reach the $3.35-an-hour rate during 1982.
In other minimum wage action, coverage in North Carolina was extended to employers of three or more rather than four or more as before; the minimum salary level for exemption of executive, administrative, or professional employees was increased in Maine; and in Oregon, persons over age 65 were removed from a list of those for whom a subminimum hourly wage rate may be set.
This excerpt is from an article published in the January 1982 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
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Footnotes 1 Unemployment insurance and worker compensation are not within the scope of this article. Separate articles will appear on each of these subjects in forthcoming issues of the Monthly Labor Review. 2 Kentucky was the only State where the legislature did not meet in 1981. Sessions were held in Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, and Puerto Rico, but no significant labor legislation was enacted in the concerns covered by this article.
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