§ 203[1] (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week.

Several exemptions exist that relieve an employer from having to meet the statutory minimum wage, overtime, and record-keeping requirements.

[19][20] The Fair Labor Standards Act was originally drafted in 1932 by Senator Hugo Black, whose proposal to require employers to adopt a thirty-hour workweek met fierce resistance.

[24] The revised proposal adopted an eight-hour day and a forty-hour workweek and allowed workers to earn wage for an extra four hours of overtime as well.

The act also specified that travel to and from the workplace was a normal incident of employment and should not be considered paid working time.

The act stated that employees had two years of performing the work to file a lawsuit for uncompensated time.

[27] The full effect of the FLSA of 1938 was postponed by the wartime inflation of the 1940s, which increased (nominal) wages to above the level specified in the Act.

On October 26, 1949, President Truman signed the Fair Labor Standards Amendment Act of 1949 (ch.

"Interstate commerce" is interpreted so broadly that most work is included, such as ordering, loading, or using supplies from out of state, accepting payments from customers based on credit cards issued by out-of-state banks, and so on.

The 1961 amendment also specified that coverage is automatic for schools, hospitals, nursing homes, or other residential care facilities.

The 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act amendment also gave federal employees coverage for the first time.

The 1974 amendment expanded coverage to include other state and local government employees that were not previously covered.

The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA), enacted in 1983, was designed to provide migrant and seasonal farm workers with protections concerning pay, working conditions, and work-related conditions to require farm labor contractors to register with the US Department of Labor and assure necessary protections for farm workers, agricultural associations, and agricultural employers.

[37] The amendment exempted state and local governments from paying overtime for special detail work performed by fire-protection, law-enforcement, and prison-security employees.

[37] In 1986, the Fair Labor Standards Act was amended to allow the United States Secretary of Labor to provide special certificates to allow an employer to pay less than the minimum wage to individuals whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by age, physical or mental deficiency, or injury.

Annually, Section 14(c) employers must also adjust the rate of pay workers receiving special minimum wages to remain comparable to that of employees without disabilities.

[50] The Department of Defense Authorization Act of 1986 repealed the eight-hour daily overtime requirements on all federal contracts.

[51] Secretary Dole said that President George H. W. Bush would veto any bill increasing the minimum wage to more than $4.25 per hour.

[52] By a vote of 248 to 171, the House of Representatives approved a bill to increase the minimum wage to $4.55 per hour in stages over a two-year period.

[62] Senators Orrin Hatch, Steve Symms, and Phil Gramm were unsuccessful at passing minimum-wage exemptions for small businesses and farmers using migrant or seasonal workers.

However, other organizations, such as the AFL–CIO, claimed the changes would make millions of additional workers ineligible to obtain relief under the FLSA for overtime pay.

Conversely, some low-level employees (particularly administrative-support staff) that had previously been classified as exempt were now reclassified as non-exempt.

[69][70][71] When the Department of Labor had determined the total annual compensation, it based it on the eightieth percentile of weekly earnings for full-time salaried employees in the United States.

In addition to these stipulations, the bill authorized a public awareness campaign to be overseen by the Secretary of Labor and required a study be conducted on the effect of the paid vacation time in the workplace.

[76] Representative Grayson was the sole original sponsor for the bill, which was immediately referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor.

The bill would have amended the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to $10.10 per hour over the course of a two-year period.

[82] On July 6, 2015, the Department of Labor published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,[83] based on a 2014 presidential memorandum signed by President Barack Obama directing the Department of Labor to update the regulations defining which white-collar workers are protected by the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime standards.

[84] On May 18, 2016, the final version of the rule was published,[84] which would require that employees earning a salary of less than $913 per week would be paid overtime, effective December 1, 2016,[84] and the threshold would be automatically adjusted every three years, beginning January 1, 2020.

[84] On November 23, 2016, a United States District judge imposed an injunction, temporarily stopping the rule's enforcement nationwide, in order to have time to determine whether the Department of Labor had the authority to issue the regulation.

It would have increased employer liability under FLSA suits to the amount promised by the employer, rather than the minimum wage, prohibit pre-dispute arbitration agreements from precluding a claim of wage theft from court, make it possible to bring FLSA class action suits without the individual consent of workers who had their wages stolen, create automatic financial penalties for violations and create a discretionary ability for the Department of Labor to refer the violators to the Department of Justice for prosecution.