When did the 40 hour work week get its start?
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was passed in 1938. This is the federal law that requires overtime to be paid after 40 hours worked in a work week. The idea is that by requiring employers to pay overtime pay at time and a half an employee’s regular rate of pay, employers would instead hire someone else to do the work that the first employee did not complete within 40 hours, thereby increasing the number of jobs available in the market place (it would be cheaper to pay two employees the straight time rate only for 40 hours each, than it would be to pay one employee straight time for the first 40 hours and time and a half for the rest of the hours). The 40-hour standard used in the FLSA comes from some of the government contracts acts that were passed earlier, where the government was trying to “level the playing field” by standardizing the wages paid to workers who worked on government contracts. They didn’t want to give unfair advantage to contractors from areas of the country wher
