03-20-2017, 10:43 PM
At the risk of drifting this thread into verboten territory, I would note that the sweatshops mentioned by pefloresjr were not exclusive to the 1930's, and sweatshops date back to a century before the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Fair Labor Standards Act was a response to the abuses mentioned, and given the conditions present at the time, a welcome one.
That being said, I suspect that removing overtime rules now would not return us to that era. Workers are substantially more productive now than they were then, so there should be a concomitant increase in the value of that labor. The labor market is pretty tight at the moment, so it would be hard for an employer to cut wages unilaterally. The rising skill level needed to perform even fairly routine jobs means that workers aren't as interchangeable as they used to be, and thus there are costs to an employer with high employee turnover. And the presence of social media campaigns, a 24/7 media, etc. means that a truly abusive employer probably couldn't get away with it for long.
As to my inquiry, it is worth noting that marketing was on the list of excluded activities from overtime. So the question still stands in a modified form; who cares about restricting overtime for people marketing agricultural produce (and I guss the answer is, their employers). But my point is that while you don't want people working with perishable foods to be pokey getting them processed or delivered, I'm not sure what the state's interest in restricting overtime to those engaged in marketing would be.
BC
That being said, I suspect that removing overtime rules now would not return us to that era. Workers are substantially more productive now than they were then, so there should be a concomitant increase in the value of that labor. The labor market is pretty tight at the moment, so it would be hard for an employer to cut wages unilaterally. The rising skill level needed to perform even fairly routine jobs means that workers aren't as interchangeable as they used to be, and thus there are costs to an employer with high employee turnover. And the presence of social media campaigns, a 24/7 media, etc. means that a truly abusive employer probably couldn't get away with it for long.
As to my inquiry, it is worth noting that marketing was on the list of excluded activities from overtime. So the question still stands in a modified form; who cares about restricting overtime for people marketing agricultural produce (and I guss the answer is, their employers). But my point is that while you don't want people working with perishable foods to be pokey getting them processed or delivered, I'm not sure what the state's interest in restricting overtime to those engaged in marketing would be.
BC