The Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted to provide a minimal standard of living necessary for the health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers and to prescribe minimum standards for working conditions. The FLSA achieves these objectives by, among other things, setting minimum wage and overtime pay requirements.
Under the FLSA, employers must pay non-exempt employees 1½ times the regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours in a work week. The FLSA’s substantive provisions also include a minimum wage requirement, the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, provisions that prohibit employers from discriminating in compensation on the basis of sex, and child labor restrictions that bar employees under the age of 18 from performing certain jobs and that limit that maximum hours that they can work.