Nearly 2 million home care workers—the vast majority of whom are women—take care of the elderly and people with disabilities, often working 12-hour days and 60 to 70 hours a week. Now, for the first time since 1975, most of these workers will have the wage and overtime protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) under a new rule issued today by the Obama administration’s Department of Labor.   

Since they were exempted from the FLSA nearly four decades ago, home care workers seldom have been paid overtime and their net income is often less than the minimum wage, considering time spent in travel between the homes where they work in a single day and its cost. Unlike workers covered by federal labor laws, they have not been paid for all the hours they are on the clock.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the nation’s cornerstone wage law, Vice President Joe Biden told a White House audience that included a number of minimum wage workers:

It’s time to raise the minimum wage and keep faith with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that set into law a guaranteed minimum wage, established the 40-hour workweek and overtime pay for more than 40 hours, outlawed child labor and set other important employment standards.

Later this morning, the Obama White House will host a celebration of the FLSA with Vice President Joe Biden and a roundtable with workers. The event will be live-streamed beginning at 11 a.m. EDT at www.whitehouse.gov/live .

If you are one of the millions of workers who count on overtime to stretch your paycheck,  including the 59% of US workers paid by the hour , it’s time to tell House Republicans, “Don’t cut my overtime with your so-called  Working Families Flexibility Act  (H.R. 1406).”   

The bill would allow employers to stop giving workers any extra pay for overtime work and instead substitute “comp time.”

What would that mean for most workers?

Republicans in Congress have renewed their decades-old attack on the 40-hour workweek. Once again, they are pushing so-called “comp time” legislation that would allow employers to stop giving workers any extra pay for overtime work.

The AFL-CIO has filed a friend of the court brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in which an employer is attempting to avoid paying its workers back wages. The case centers on a Pennsylvania nurse, Laura Symczyk, Genesis Healthcare Corp. and methods employers are using to get around paying wages due under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Not only are corporations sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash and refusing to hire workers, now it appears employers who are making fewer workers do even more aren’t paying their overtime wages. The number of overtime wage theft complaints, filed by workers in the first half of this year, matches last year’s total filed under the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to a  new report.

Anastasia Christman is a senior policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project.

Last month activists all over the planet shined a light on the persistence of child labor on the World Day Against Child Labor. As many as  215 million children worldwide  lose the chance to learn, play and grow as they instead are compelled to join the workforce, often under grueling conditions. As we in the United States celebrate the anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) passed in 1938, we should recommit to the part of its mission dedicated to fighting oppressive child labor in our own country. 

This is a cross-post from Regs Talk, the National Employment Law  Project  ( NELP ) blog. Catherine Ruckelshaus is the legal co-director of NELP. 

Big drug companies’ salespeople don’t usually inspire much sympathy for being overworked or exploited. But last week’s Supreme Court decision in  Christopher v. GlaxoSmithKline   was a reminder that even pharmaceutical sales representatives, who brought a case for working 60-odd hours a week without being paid overtime, can face unfair working conditions that need to be checked.

This week marks the 74th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act ( FLSA ), which established a minimum wage floor, outlawed some forms of child labor and discouraged overly long workweeks by requiring premium pay for any hours worked over 40 in a week. By paying time-and-a-half of one’s regular hourly wage for overtime, the policy is intended not only to compensate workers for long hours but also to promote work sharing or spreading by employers, who can hire additional workers for the extra hours needed. Especially in tough economic times, it’s a practice that is not only fair but makes good economic sense.

A Florida potato grower and its labor contractor have been accused of labor trafficking and taking advantage of workers, according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Jacksonville by Florida Legal Services and Farmworker Justice . The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida , on behalf of two farm workers who say they were victims of labor trafficking and other violations of federal and state labor laws while employed in 2009 and 2010 by Bulls-Hit Ranch & Farm, a potato grower in Hastings, Fla.