Quote:
Originally Posted by wdfifteen
It was still the minimum wage. The minimum wage is DEFINED.
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But it was "defined" differently. When I was growing up, we called people happy people "gay" and folks who acted a bit different "queer".
When I was young, where I grew up, a person who had a job that received "minimum wage" was considered very well off indeed as they made much more than most people. It was not the minimum for a majority of Americans. It was only the "minimum" that their company could pay for that specific job in that particular location (based on business size and type). Most small businesses and labor related jobs were excluded (and most jobs were small business or labor related).
Min wage initially did not fully cover many employees. There were exemptions for most small business (and many others simply did not pay it).
Employees of retail trade enterprises with sales of less than $1 million annually were not covered. Individual establishments within those covered enterprises were still exempt if their annual sales fell below $250,000.
Even if they met the sales of over $1M, retail and service establishments were allowed to employ fulltime students at wages of 15 percent below the minimum.
Employees of the "air transport industry" were not covered.
Public schools, nursing homes, laundries, domestic workers and the construction industry and farm workers were not covered.
Supervisory employees of Federal, State, and local governments were not covered.