Minimum Wage
Minimum Wage
Before 1938 workers were getting paid anywhere from two to four dollars a
week depending on what job they preformed and how hard they worked. The
not-so-skilled were getting ten to fifteen cents and hour and the somewhat
skilled workers were getting twenty to twenty a??five cents an hour. These
obscene wages lasted up until June 27, 1938. This day was a milestone for
underpaid workers. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was President at the time, signed
the nations first minimum wage law. This new law put a price floor of
twenty-five cents an hour on this rapidly growing market. Not only did the law
set an hourly rate, but also a maximum work week of forty-four hours. As time
went on, the minimum wage increased. During the Reagan years in 1949, the
hourly wage went from forty cents to seventy cents. The increase wouldna??t
stop there. In 1996, President Clinton raised the minimum wage to five dollars
and fifteen cents and hour. Now Sixty-five years later, from when the law was
first signed, the federal minimum wage stands at five dollars and fifteen cents.
The federal minimum wage didna??t stop individual states from raising the wage.
California,
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