The Fair Labor Standards Act – How Does Anyone Know What It Means?
The Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1939 and it is 49 pages long. Here is the whole text of the act. Go ahead, click on it and read it. I dare you. Reading the entire FSLA is up there with reading War and Peace with many characters with long Russian names like Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky and Countess Natasha Ilinichna Rostova ( I looked them up on Wikipedia).
I just read the FSLA a few times trying to get to the source of a legal issue. I read a bunch of cases on it and articles and a treatise Frankly, what were they all smoking? I cannot find support in the text for much of what they say. The FSLA is cryptic. You need to read it like you are staring at the Mona Lisa and try to understand the hidden meaning of subtle signs. Like the Mona Lisa, it can mean something different to everyone who looks at it. Who knows what the authors really meant. It is not clear. Maybe all the judges and writers who have interpreted the FSLA know someone who was there when it was enacted so long ago. If you take the time to read the FSLA, there is only one thing to take away from it. It needs to be re-written. Until then, lawyers will have a blast because its vagueness is an invitation to argue.
