“Seventy years ago today, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Act—a landmark piece of legislation that extended protections to millions of American workers and set the precedent for decades of Democratic efforts to uphold fairness in the workplace. The FLSA established the first national minimum wage, guaranteed fair payment for overtime work, and prohibited ‘oppressive child labor.’ In a message to Congress, FDR declared that ‘a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling worker's wages or stretching workers' hours.’

 

“It’s a principle that still guides us today. Because every worker deserves a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s labor, the new Democratic Congress passed the first increase to the minimum wage in 10 years. This July, the national minimum wage will be $6.55 per hour; next year, it will be $7.25 per hour. That’s a far cry from the 25 cents an hour set in 1938—but Democrats’ commitment to fair labor standards has remained a constant.”