The FLSA - Reasons and Opposition
Overview | Early Minimum Wages | The FLSA - Reasons and Conflict | Conclusion & References
Gendered Analysis
While the desire to help low wage workers achieve a higher standard of living is an important issue, many economists concentrate on the social issue of gender relations as applicable to the minimum wage.
The Eugenics of Wage Floors
In his 2005 article "Protecting Family and Wage", Tim Leonard posits that the minimum wage can be used as a eugenic device. While it is traditionally thought that minimum wages can help minority groups, Leonard argues that Progressives wished to use market forces to cause disemployment of "undesirable" groups, such as women and racial minorities. A binding wage floor causes lower demand for labor, in turn creating an excess supply - unemployment. Progressives believed that this unemployment would occur in groups they wanted to push out of the work force. (Leonard 2005).
Challenges
Leonard's analysis does not provide evidence that Progressives had any reason to believe that "undesirables" would be the ones unemployed, rather than supposedly superior white males, under minimum wage legislation. Nor does he clarify how the Progressives explained white male unemployment without a wage floor or female employment with one. There is no evidence why a minimum wage would do a 'better' job at removing minorities than plain prejudice.
Evidence from the time directly contradicts Leonard's hypothesis. In a 1937 study of state-level minimum wages in Rhode Island, it was found that wage floors for female-dominated industries did not cause any significant unemployment ("Effects of minimum wage" 1938). If such information were accurate on the national level, that would mean that Leonard's idea that the minimum was could be used as an oppressive mechanism was incorrect. Wage floors could not be used as a eugenic device if they did not complete the intended function of causing unemployment in underprivileged persons.
Male Breadwinners
Another side to the gendered analysis is that of men as family breadwinners. While some minimum wages may have been established to protect women from employer exploitation, others may have been enacted to allow financial responsibility to remain with men. With their husbands earning higher pay, women could afford to remain housewives. In this way, the minimum wage could have acted as an economic divider between the sexes (Mutari 2004). Yet, like with Leonard's argument, statistics from a contemporary writer do not show any significant amount of female unemployment after the adoption of a wage floor.
Role of Unions
Along with the courts, labor unions were a major source of opposition against early minimum wages and, later, the FLSA. Unions saw wage floor legislation as restricting their ability to collectively bargain. Some unions actively campaigned against wage floors, while others worked to change the FLSA to their advantage by making unionized industries exempt from the Act. Because of their political power, unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) were able to stall the passage of the federal minimum wage (Samuel 2000).
Voting on the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
Role of the Southern Political System
The traditional view of economists is that North-South political differentials had an enormous impact on Congressional voting on the FLSA. Among Southern Democrats in the House of Representatives, the number of 'no' votes is seen as a departure from previous voting records as they had previously been in support of most, if not all, New Deal legislation (Fleck 2002). Regressions of political considerations against FLSA vote show that, for Southern Democrats, political variables such as voter turnout were a major factor in determining an individual legislator's vote for or against the Act (Fleck 2002).
Role of Legislator Ideology
In his 1995 paper "The Political Economy of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938", Andrew Seltzer takes a view different from the traditional one. While he argues that it was real economic factors, not political ones, that determined Southern votes, Seltzer inadvertently shows that politics did have an impact. Regressions of variables such as legislator ideology, political party, and time to reelection show that for all FLSA votes, ideology was a significant factor, and that political party was important in determining the House vote(Seltzer 1995). This would suggest that politics was, in fact, a major consideration in the decision to adopt a national minimum wage.
Overview | Early Minimum Wages | The FLSA - Reasons and Conflict | Conclusion & References
