The Employment and Civil Rights lawyers of LaBar & Adams, P.A. in Orlando have obtained judgments in the amount of $97,219.56 in Federal District Court last week in a lawsuit where the Defendants utilized their unequal bargaining power to deny our clients’ the living wage protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The FLSA was enacted to remedy labor conditions that are detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and the general well-being of America’s work force. Such Wage-Hour legislation was one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s primary legislative priorities and was part of the constitutional revolution of 1937, marking a high point in the clash of President Roosevelt and New Deal legislators. Indeed, President Roosevelt recognized the fundamental right of the American citizenry to receive a living wage in 1937, when he proclaimed,
Our Nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling worker’s wages or stretching workers’ hours.
As further evidence of the importance President Roosevelt placed on working conditions, in 1944, during the height of World War II, he proclaimed to the Nation in his State of the Union:
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty. As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
The rights that President Roosevelt proclaimed were the rights of the common man and woman, the rights of the American working class. We as a society must remember that we are not here dealing with mere chattels or articles of trade but with the rights of those who toil, of those who sacrifice a full measure of their freedom and talents to the use and profit of others.
The Employment and Civil Rights lawyers of LaBar & Adams, P.A. are proud to rectify the violation of individual’s civil rights. The protection of such rights are fundamental to our community at large. This is because the exploitation of a class of workers who are in an unequal position with respect to bargaining power and are thus relatively defenseless against the denial of a living wage is not only detrimental to their individual health and well-being but casts a direct burden for their support upon our community. What these workers lose in wages we the taxpayers are called upon to pay.
The Employment and Civil Rights Lawyers at LaBar & Adams, P.A. handle the full range of Plaintiff’s employment and civil rights issues, to include Title VII (discrimination), FLSA (overtime/minimum wage), FMLA (medical leave), ERISA (health & retirement plan issues), COBRA (health coverage issues), ARRA (medical benefit issues), FCRA (discrimination & retaliation), Whistle-Blower Claims, Worker’s Compensation Retaliation, Unemployment, Unpaid Wages, etc.
If we can be of service to you, your clients, friends, or family, please do not hesitate to contact us at 407-835-8968 or fill out the online form located on our website.
