The NRA was an essential element in the National Industrial Recovery Act (June 1933), which authorized the president to institute industry-wide codes intended to eliminate unfair trade practices, reduce unemployment, establish minimum wages and maximum hours, and guarantee the right of labour to bargain collectively.
He called a special session again in October 1937 to establish minimum wages and maximum hours of work, and again in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and triggered World War II.
Before that, America's last significant wave of individual fortune-building, the original Gilded Age, a century ago, touched off decades worth of struggles over the distribution and domestication of that wealth: union battles, antitrust laws, muckraking exposes, the rapid growth of public education, laws establishing minimum wages and maximum hours and even the income tax.
But, he asked, "how is it that the Constitution this morning forbids what for three-quarters of a century it has tolerated or approved?" Both Frankfurter and Jackson had been deeply affected by the New Deal era, during which a right-wing Supreme Court had struck down progressive legislation approved by their beloved Franklin Delano Roosevelt, including regulations establishing minimum wages.
Many members grumble that the Christian Democrats have tacked too far to the center under Mrs. Merkel, giving up on mainstay positions like support for atomic energy and military conscription, and most recently moving toward a compromise on establishing minimum wages in sectors where there are no collective labor agreements.
Strikingly, the aspect of compliance of the established minimum wage rates has been largely overlooked in OECD countries.
The federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 first established minimum wage and overtime standards but excluded all agricultural workers, the majority of whom at the time were African American.
Meanwhile, the president is able to issue the wildest constitutional declarations but is unable to make the smallest step towards establishing minimum and maximum wages.
So in either case, the claim that controlling for spatial heterogeneity establishes that minimum wages do not reduce employment of unskilled workers is unfounded.2.2
Last month, Sonn also pointed out to me that Santa Cruz, Calif., was considering plans to introduce a measure that would establish a minimum wage of $9.25 an hour.
