Word: law
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Elmer Andrews and his staff issued tentative definitions (TIME, Oct. 31) and freely ladled out the hard-boiled advice: "When in doubt, comply." But the fact was that no one could give a final answer. A sizable segment of U. S. economic life is at the mercy of a law which only the courts can legally interpret...
...Law is as sloppy a statute as ever was slapped together by a closing Congress. Since the Fair Labor Standards Act went into effect on October 24, its botched provisions had turned out to be among those with the widest effects. U. S. business still gets along as well as it does principally because the law does not apply to some 33,000,000 of 44,000,000 gainfully employed people in the U. S., and because it alters the wages or hours of no more than 3,000,000 of those to whom it does apply...
Specifically exempt from the provisions of the Act are those engaged in such occupations as agriculture, fishing, local service and retail trades. The law applies to most others if they are engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for interstate commerce. Of 11,000,000 workers and 250,000 employers so engaged, the majority are in manufacturing and mining industries. But no occupational rule-of-thumb can settle...
This beautiful bayonet may help enforcement, but unfortunately it is not clear in many cases what constitutes a violation of the Act. The law says: "No provision of this Act shall justify any employer in reducing a wage paid by him which is in excess of the applicable minimum wage under this Act. . . ." If an employer who previously paid $20 or 40? an hour for a 50-hour week cuts his nominal hourly rate to 38?, and pays $20.14 for 50 hours (including the six overtime hours at 1½ times 38?) he may violate the law...
General Counsel Calvert Magruder, is Real No. 2 man in Wages & Hours. Tommy Corcoran drafted him on a year's leave from Harvard Law School, where he is assistant dean...