125-575: The Minimum Wage Fairness Act ( S. 1737 ) is a bill that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to $ 10.10 per hour over the course of a two-year period. The bill was strongly supported by President Barack Obama and many of the Democratic Senators, but strongly opposed by Republicans in the Senate and House. The bill
250-410: A public domain source. The Minimum Wage Fairness Act would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to: (1) $ 8.20 an hour beginning on the first day of the sixth month after the enactment of this Act, (2) $ 9.15 an hour beginning one year after the date of such initial increase, (3) $ 10.10 an hour beginning two years after such date, and (4)
375-462: A "Public Domain Day" was initially informal; the earliest known mention was in 2004 by Wallace McLean (a Canadian public domain activist), with support for the idea echoed by Lawrence Lessig . As of 1 January 2010, there is as Public Domain Day website lists the authors whose works are entering the public domain. There are activities in countries around the world by various organizations all under
500-672: A "break time for nursing mothers" provision. It specifies that employers shall provide break time for nursing mothers to express milk and that "a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public" should be available for employees to express milk. On September 27, 2019, the Department of Labor released a rule setting the salary level or amount test at $ 684 per week (equivalent to $ 35,568 per year) in order for an employee to qualify as an FLSA-exempt executive employee, administrative employee, and professional employee. In order to qualify as
625-440: A bill to increase the minimum wage from $ 3.35 per hour to $ 4.55 per hour in stages. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole supported increasing the minimum wage to $ 4.25 per hour along with allowing a minimum wage of $ 3.35 an hour for new employees' first ninety days of employment for an employer. Secretary Dole said that President George H. W. Bush would veto any bill increasing the minimum wage to more than $ 4.25 per hour. By
750-514: A copyright has expired depends on an examination of the copyright in its source country. In most countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention , copyright term is based on the life of the author, and extends to 50 or 70 years beyond the death of the author. (See List of copyright terms of countries .) In the United States, determining whether a work has entered the public domain or
875-415: A country's copyright laws, and are therefore in the public domain; for example, in the United States, items excluded from copyright include the formulae of Newtonian physics and cooking recipes. Other works are actively dedicated by their authors to the public domain (see waiver ); examples include reference implementations of cryptographic algorithms, and the image-processing software ImageJ (created by
1000-429: A country-by-country basis, and the absence of registration in a particular country, if required, gives rise to public-domain status for a work in that country. The term public domain may also be interchangeably used with other imprecise or undefined terms such as the public sphere or commons , including concepts such as the "commons of the mind", the "intellectual commons", and the "information commons". Although
1125-657: A disability. There are several proposed bills that would repeal and eventually phase out Section 14(c) certifications such as H.R. 873 or H.R. 582 (Raise the Wage Act) which was passed by the House of Representatives in July 2019, but did not pass. Both political parties have expressed support to repealing this program. The Department of Defense Authorization Act of 1986 repealed the eight-hour daily overtime requirements on all federal contracts. In 1989, Senator Edward M. Kennedy introduced
1250-402: A frequency which must be greater than occasional, but which may be less than constant." While the nomenclature of a job title is not dispositive, the job of "busboy" is explicitly validated for tip-pool inclusion by an authoritative source. "A busboy performs an integral part of customer service without much direct interaction, but he does so in a manner visible to customers. ... Thus, for
1375-473: A greater chance of becoming law, such as an increase to only $ 9 an hour. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) expressed a willingness to negotiate with Republicans about some of the provisions of the bill, such as the timeline for the phase-in. Warner said that any increase needs to be done "in a responsible way." Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) wanted additional debate on the timeline and the raise for tipped workers. Landrieu said that "I do not believe that $ 10.10 an hour
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#17328513217101500-505: A grower (who generally monitors the quality of the work performed, determines where to place workers, controls the volume of work available, has quality control requirements, and has the power to fire, discipline, or provide work instructions to workers). In many instances, employers do not pay overtime properly for non-exempt jobs, such as not paying an employee for travel time between job sites, activities before or after their shifts, and preparation central to work activities. If an employee
1625-437: A highly compensated employee, the total annual compensation test was set at $ 107,432. When the Department of Labor had determined the total annual compensation, it based it on the eightieth percentile of weekly earnings for full-time salaried employees in the United States. The Paid Vacation Act of 2009, introduced by Representative Alan Grayson on May 21, 2009, proposed that all employers with 100 or more employees provide
1750-470: A lower minimum wage for employees who are less than twenty years old. The bill eliminated different minimum wages for retail and non-retail businesses. The next week, the Senate approved the bill by a vote of 89 to 8. Senators Orrin Hatch , Steve Symms , and Phil Gramm were unsuccessful at passing minimum-wage exemptions for small businesses and farmers using migrant or seasonal workers. President Bush signed
1875-542: A package that would help low-income families without causing the kind of job loss that the Congressional Budget Office has warned against." [REDACTED] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Government . Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 29 U.S.C. § 203 ( FLSA )
2000-409: A paid vacation to all eligible personnel. This earned period of time was initially defined as seven working days and increased to fourteen working days three years after the bill passed. Additionally, employers with 50 or more personnel would have been required to provide one working week of paid vacation. This vacation period was to be used within a twelve-month period. In addition to these stipulations,
2125-407: A push by some members of Congress, retail workers, service workers, agricultural workers, and construction workers were still not required to be paid at least the minimum wage. The 1961 amendment added another method of determining a type of coverage called enterprise coverage. Enterprise coverage applies only when the business is involved in interstate commerce and its gross annual business volume
2250-509: A report that an "estimate half a million jobs would be lost if lawmakers passed the president's proposal" to increase the minimum wage to $ 10.10 an hour. Spokesman Brendan Buck for Speaker of the House John Boehner said in reaction that "the president's plan would increase costs for consumers and eliminate jobs for those who need them the most" so the House would "continue focusing on our plan to protect workers' hours and create jobs, not
2375-594: A revised version of Black's proposal was passed. The revised version was instrumentally supported by a number of notable people, including Frances Perkins , Clara Mortenson Beyer from the Bureau of Labor Standards within the United States Department of Labor , as well as Congresswoman Mary T. Norton . The revised proposal adopted an eight-hour day and a forty-hour workweek and allowed workers to earn wage for an extra four hours of overtime as well. According to
2500-510: A seniority system, a merit system, a system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production, or other factors outside of sex. For the first nine years of the EPA, the requirement of equal pay for equal work did not extend to persons employed in an executive, administrative or professional capacity, or as an outside salesperson. Therefore, the EPA exempted white-collar women from the protection of equal pay for equal work. In 1972, Congress enacted
2625-450: A service bartender to be validly included in a tip pool, he must meet this minimal threshold in a manner sufficient to incentivize customers to 'customarily and regularly' tip in recognition" of his services (though he need not receive the tips directly). The Fair Labor Standards Act was originally drafted in 1932 by Senator Hugo Black , whose proposal to require employers to adopt a thirty-hour workweek met fierce resistance. In 1938,
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#17328513217102750-530: A substantially different capacity from the employee's regular full-time employment on a sporadic basis. The amendment stated that individuals who volunteer to perform services for a state or local government agency are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act if the individual receives no compensation or nominal compensation. The amendment stated that state and local legislative employees, other than legislative library employees, are not covered by
2875-516: A vote of 248 to 171, the House of Representatives approved a bill to increase the minimum wage to $ 4.55 per hour in stages over a two-year period. The bill also allowed employers to pay new employees at least 85 percent of the minimum wage during the first sixty days of employment of a newly hired employee with no previous employment. The bill also increased the exemption from minimum wage law for small businesses from $ 362,500 to $ 500,000 of annual sales. By
3000-547: A vote of 61 to 39, the Senate approved a bill to increase the minimum wage to $ 4.55 per hour. President Bush vetoed the bill, calling the increase "excessive". The House of Representatives unsuccessfully tried to override the veto, voting 247 to 178 to override, 37 votes short. By a vote of 382 to 37, the House of Representatives approved a revised bill that would increase the minimum wage to $ 3.80 per hour as of April 1990, and $ 4.25 per hour as of April 1, 1991. The bill would allow
3125-458: A wage was specifically defined, and entitlement to sue for back wages was granted. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was enacted to amend the FLSA and make it illegal to pay some workers lower wages than others strictly on the basis on their sex. It is often summed up with the phrase " equal pay for equal work ". The Equal Pay Act allows unequal pay for equal work only when the employer sets wages pursuant to
3250-475: A work, as well as other forms of transformation or adaptation. Copyrighted works may not be used for derivative works without permission from the copyright owner, while public domain works can be freely used for derivative works without permission. Artworks that are public domain may also be reproduced photographically or artistically or used as the basis of new, interpretive works. Works derived from public domain works can be copyrighted. Once works enter into
3375-613: A year satisfies the commerce requirements of the FLSA, and therefore that employer's workers are subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act's protections if no other exemption applies. Several exemptions exist that relieve an employer from having to meet the statutory minimum wage, overtime, and record-keeping requirements. The largest exceptions apply to the so-called " white collar " exemptions that are applicable to professional, administrative and executive employees, though exemptions also exist for jobs such as movie theater workers. Exemptions are narrowly construed, as an employer must prove that
3500-447: Is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage , and " time-and-a-half " overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppressive child labor". It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The Act
3625-407: Is a public domain source. S. 1737 would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage in three steps from $ 7.25 per hour to $ 10.10 per hour, and to adjust the wage annually thereafter to account for inflation . In addition, the bill would increase the federal minimum cash wage for workers who receive tips by gradually raising that wage until it equals 70 percent of
3750-606: Is a combination of the copyright symbol , which acts as copyright notice , with the international 'no' symbol . The Europeana databases use it, and for instance on the Wikimedia Commons in February 2016 2.9 million works (~10% of all works) are listed with the mark. The underlying idea that is expressed or manifested in the creation of a work generally cannot be the subject of copyright law (see idea–expression divide ). Mathematical formulae will therefore generally form part of
3875-505: Is a film that was never under copyright, was released to public domain by its author, or whose copyright has expired. All films in the United States before January 1st, 1929 have been entered in the public domain. Pamela Samuelson has identified eight "values" that can arise from information and works in the public domain. Possible values include: Derivative works include translations , musical arrangements , and dramatizations of
Minimum Wage Fairness Act - Misplaced Pages Continue
4000-593: Is a minimum of $ 500,000. All employees working for "enterprises" are then covered by the FLSA if the individual firms of the "enterprise have a revenue greater than $ 500,000 per year". Under the original 1938 Act, a worker whose work is in the channels of interstate commerce is covered as an individual. "Interstate commerce" is interpreted so broadly that most work is included, such as ordering, loading, or using supplies from out of state, accepting payments from customers based on credit cards issued by out-of-state banks, and so on. The 1961 amendment also specified that coverage
4125-404: Is automatic for schools, hospitals, nursing homes, or other residential care facilities. Coverage is also automatic for all governmental entities at whatever level of government, no matter the size. Coverage does not apply to certain entities not organized for business, such as churches and charitable institutions. The minimum wage level was again increased to $ 1.25 per hour. What could be considered
4250-611: Is better known as aspirin in the United States—a generic term. In Canada, however, Aspirin , with an uppercase A, is still a trademark of the German company Bayer , while aspirin, with a lowercase "a", is not. Bayer lost the trademark in the United States, the UK and France after World War I, as part of the Treaty of Versailles . So many copycat products entered the marketplace during the war that it
4375-478: Is entitled to overtime, the employer must pay them one and a half times their "regular rate of pay" for all hours they work over 40 in the same work week. Employees employed in a ministerial role by a religiously affiliated employer are not entitled to overtime under the act. During World War II, the Army-Navy "E" Award for excellence in war production required maintaining the fair labor standards established under
4500-487: Is in the public domain due to an unrenewed copyright. Courts in different jurisdictions have come to different conclusions as to whether the reproduction of a public domain work gains its own rights protection, or whether it to is in the public domain. In a German 2016 case, the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen , an art museum, sued Wikimedia Commons over photographs uploaded to the database depicting pieces of art in
4625-495: Is no consensus between economists about the effects of minimum wages on youth employment, although empirical evidence suggests that this group is most vulnerable to high minimum wages. However, new evidence for workers that were bound by the minimum wage suggests a distinct negative impact on employment and income growth. This summary is based largely on the summary provided by the Congressional Research Service ,
4750-470: Is not possible to waive those rights, but only the rights related to the exploitation of the work. A solution to this issue (as found in the Creative Commons Zero dedication) is to interpret the license by setting "three different layers of action. First, the right holder waives any copyright and related rights that can be waived in accordance with the applicable law. Secondly, if there are rights that
4875-506: Is only registered in reference to food products (a trademark claim is made within a particular field). Such defences have failed in the United Kingdom. Public Domain Day is an observance of when copyrighted works expire and works enter into the public domain. This legal transition of copyright works into the public domain usually happens every year on 1 January based on the individual copyright laws of each country . The observance of
5000-502: Is required to grant permission (" Permission culture "). There are multiple licenses which aim to release works into the public domain. In 2000 the WTFPL was released as a public domain like software license . Creative Commons (created in 2002 by Lawrence Lessig , Hal Abelson , and Eric Eldred ) has introduced several public-domain-like licenses, called Creative Commons licenses . These give authors of works (that would qualify for copyright)
5125-411: Is still under copyright depends upon what the law or regulation was at creation, and whether new regulations have grandfathered in certain older works. Because copyright terms shifted over the course of the 20th century from a fixed-term based on first publication, with a possible renewal term , to a term extending to 50, then 70, years after the death of the author. The claim that "pre-1929 works are in
Minimum Wage Fairness Act - Misplaced Pages Continue
5250-675: Is the Zero Clause BSD license , released in 2006 and aimed at software. In October 2014, the Open Knowledge Foundation recommends the Creative Commons CC0 license to dedicate content to the public domain, and the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) for data. In most countries, the term of rights for patents is 20 years, after which the invention becomes part of
5375-564: Is too high to aspire to, but how quickly we get there and what increments, the tipped wage, how that should be handled, who should get paid the tipped wage, and who shouldn't. There are a lot of questions about that, and some of those discussions are going on." President Barack Obama strongly supported increasing the minimum wage, giving speeches about it urging Congress to take action. Obama argued that "if you pay people well, there's more money in everybody's pockets, and everybody does better." The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in
5500-422: The public sphere or commons , including concepts such as the "commons of the mind", the "intellectual commons", and the "information commons". A public-domain book is a book with no copyright, a book that was created without a license, or a book where its copyrights expired or have been forfeited. In most countries the term of protection of copyright expires on the first day of January, 70 years after
5625-488: The Education Amendments of 1972 , which amended the FLSA to expand the coverage of the EPA to these employees, by excluding the EPA from the professional workers exemption of the FLSA. The 1966 amendment expanded coverage to some farm workers and increased the minimum wage to $ 1.60 per hour in stages. The 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act amendment also gave federal employees coverage for the first time. A 2021 study on
5750-590: The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 . This provision amended the FLSA to provide for the increase of the federal minimum wage by an incremental plan, culminating in a minimum wage of $ 7.25 per hour by July 24, 2009. Further, American territories including American Samoa and Puerto Rico were to adopt the mainland minimum wage in a series of incremental increases. Section 4207 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) amends Section 7 to add
5875-519: The German Copyright Act , stating that since the photographer needed to make practical decisions about the photograph that it was protected material. In contrast, in the 1999 US case Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. , the court ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality . In some countries, certain works may never fully lapse into
6000-542: The Music of Mesopotamia system, was created 4,000 years ago. Guido of Arezzo introduced Latin musical notation in the 10th century. This laid the foundation for the preservation of global music in the public domain, a distinction formalized alongside copyright systems in the 17th century. Musicians copyrighted their publications of musical notation as literary writings, but performing copyrighted pieces and creating derivative works were not restricted by early copyright laws. Copying
6125-473: The National Institutes of Health ). The term public domain is not normally applied to situations where the creator of a work retains residual rights, in which case use of the work is referred to as "under license" or "with permission". As rights vary by country and jurisdiction, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another. Some rights depend on registrations on
6250-484: The "economic reality" of the relationship between the putative employer and the worker to determine whether the worker is an independent contractor. Courts use a similar test to determine whether a worker was concurrently employed by more than one person or entity; commonly referred to as "joint employers". For example, a farm worker may be considered jointly employed by a labor contractor (who is in charge of recruitment, transportation, payroll, and keeping track of hours) and
6375-427: The "personality" of the person drawing them, are not subject to copyright protection. This is separate from the patent rights just mentioned. A trademark registration may remain in force indefinitely, or expire without specific regard to its age. For a trademark registration to remain valid, the owner must continue to use it. In some circumstances, such as disuse, failure to assert trademark rights, or common usage by
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#17328513217106500-409: The 2004 amendment to the FLSA now requires that an exemption must be predicated upon actual job function and not job title. Employees with job titles that previously allowed exemption but whose job descriptions did not include managerial functions were now reclassified from exempt to non-exempt. On May 25, 2007, President Bush signed into law a supplemental appropriation bill (H.R. 2206), which contains
6625-463: The Act. The Fair Labor Standards Act sets minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards, but certain employees may be exempt. The exemptions include executive, administrative, professional, computer employee, and outside sales exemptions. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, an employer has to pay each employee the minimum wage, unless the employee is "engaged in an occupation in which
6750-452: The FLSA in order to increase the number of employees who are covered by minimum wage laws and to increase the minimum wage itself to 90 cents per hour. At the time, retail workers and services workers were not covered by minimum wage laws. Congress passed an amendment to the FLSA, and President Eisenhower signed it on August 12, 1955. The amendment increased the minimum wage from 75¢ per hour to $ 1 per hour, effective March 1, 1956. Despite
6875-442: The Fair Labor Standards Act if they are "directly essential" to production of goods for interstate commerce . The act increased the minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents per hour, effective January 24, 1950. The act prohibited oppressive child labor in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce. The act also included a few new exemptions for special worker classes. In 1955, President Eisenhower urged Congress to amend
7000-745: The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to $ 10.10 per hour over the course of a two-year period. The bill was strongly supported by President Barack Obama and many of the Democratic senators, but strongly opposed by Republicans in the Senate and House. In January 2015, President Barack Obama asked Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act under which employers would be allowed to give employees one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours they work up. This applies for up to seven days or 56 hours of paid sick leave annually instead of paying overtime to
7125-632: The Fair Labor Standards Act. In 1986, the Fair Labor Standards Act was amended to allow the United States Secretary of Labor to provide special certificates to allow an employer to pay less than the minimum wage to individuals whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by age, physical or mental deficiency, or injury. These employees must still be paid wages that are related to the individual's productivity and commensurate with those paid to similarly located and employed nonhandicapped workers. However, paying workers with disabilities less than
7250-714: The House Committee on Education and Labor. Like the original proposition, the bill was referred to the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections in July 2013. There have been no reports issued by either the committee or subcommittee. Both bills were met with opposition which cited concerns of the loss of jobs or benefits. In April 2014, the United States Senate debated the Minimum Wage Fairness Act (S. 1737; 113th Congress) . The bill would have amended
7375-473: The Senate would not vote on the bill until three weeks later after a two-week April recess. The delay of the Senate vote on the bill was attributed to Reid's inability to get all members of the Democratic party in the Senate to agree to vote in favor of the bill. Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) opposed the bill. Pryor was up for election in 2014 and was considered "the Senate's most vulnerable incumbent." Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) preferred legislation that would have
7500-561: The Supreme Court's decision. It specified exactly what type of time was considered compensable work time. In general, as long as an employee is engaging in activities that benefit the employer, regardless of when they are performed, the employer has an obligation to pay the employee for that time. The act also specified that travel to and from the workplace was a normal incident of employment and should not be considered paid working time. The act stated that employees had two years of performing
7625-575: The UK). In countries where they cannot be waived they will remain into full effect in accordance to the applicable law (think of France, Spain or Italy where moral rights cannot be waived)." The same occurs in Switzerland. The Unlicense , published around 2010, has a focus on an anti-copyright message. The Unlicense offers a public domain waiver text with a fallback public domain-like license inspired by permissive licenses but without attribution. Another option
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#17328513217107750-479: The US, foreign-sourced works and US-sourced works are now treated differently, with foreign-sourced works remaining under copyright regardless of compliance with formalities, while domestically sourced works may be in the public domain if they failed to comply with then-existing formalities requirements—a situation described as odd by some scholars, and unfair by some US-based rightsholders. Works of various governments around
7875-551: The US, works could be easily given into the public domain by just releasing it without an explicit copyright notice . With the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 (and the earlier Copyright Act of 1976 , which went into effect in 1978), all works were by default copyright protected and needed to be actively given into public domain by a waiver statement/ anti-copyright can call notice . Not all legal systems have processes for reliably donating works to
8000-464: The ability to decide which protections they would like to place on their material. As copyright is the default license for new material, Creative Commons licenses offer authors a variety of options to designate their work under whichever license they wish, as long as this does not violate standing copyright law. For example, a CC BY license allows for re-users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon material, while also agreeing to provide attribution to
8125-491: The act, workers must be paid minimum wage and overtime pay must be one-and-a-half times regular pay. Children under eighteen cannot do certain dangerous jobs, and children under sixteen cannot work in manufacturing or mining or during school hours. Though it did not cover executives, seasonal employees, and some other groups, the Fair Labor Standards Act gave raises to 700,000 workers, and US President Franklin Roosevelt called it
8250-492: The amount determined by the United States Secretary of Labor (based on increases in the Consumer Price Index ) beginning three years after such date and annually thereafter. The bill would increase the federal minimum wage for tipped employees to $ 3.00 an hour for one year beginning on the first day of the sixth month after the enactment of this Act. The bill would provide a formula for subsequent annual adjustments of
8375-519: The applicable minimum wage.” The 1996 amendment increased the minimum wage to $ 5.15 an hour. However, the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996 (PL 104-188), which provided the minimum-wage increase, also detached tipped employees from future minimum-wage increases. On August 23, 2004, controversial changes to exemptions from the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime requirements went into effect, making substantial modifications to
8500-592: The author in any of these cases. In 2009 the Creative Commons released the CC0 , which was created for compatibility with law domains which have no concept of dedicating into public domain . This is achieved by a public domain waiver statement and a fallback all-permissive license, in case the waiver is not possible. Unlike in the US, where author's moral rights are generally not specifically regulated, in some countries where moral rights are protected separately in law it
8625-532: The bill authorized a public awareness campaign to be overseen by the Secretary of Labor and required a study be conducted on the effect of the paid vacation time in the workplace. On May 21, 2009, the bill was referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor and two months later referred to the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. The bill remained in the subcommittee with no report or recommendation issued. At
8750-413: The bill two weeks later. While computer science was a relatively new field, it was argued since the 1960s that technical specialists in the computer services field, carefully defined, ought to be regarded as "professional" and, thus, exempt from the overtime pay protections of the FLSA. In 1990 legislation classified computer workers as professionals if their hourly pay was “at least 6½ times greater than
8875-536: The changes would make millions of additional workers ineligible to obtain relief under the FLSA for overtime pay. Attempts in Congress to overturn the new regulations were unsuccessful. Conversely, some low-level employees (particularly administrative-support staff) that had previously been classified as exempt were now reclassified as non-exempt. Although such employees work in positions bearing titles previously used to determine exempt status (such as "executive assistant"),
9000-664: The construction of the idea of "public domain" sprouted from the concepts of res communes , res publicae , and res universitatis in early Roman law. When the first early copyright law was originally established in Britain with the Statute of Anne in 1710, public domain did not appear. However, similar concepts were developed by British and French jurists in the 18th century. Instead of "public domain", they used terms such as publici juris or propriété publique to describe works that were not covered by copyright law. The phrase "fall in
9125-405: The date and location of publishing, unless explicitly released beforehand. The Musopen project records music in the public domain for the purposes of making the music available to the general public in a high-quality audio format. Online musical archives preserve collections of classical music recorded by Musopen and offer them for download/distribution as a public service. A public-domain film
9250-466: The death of the latest living author. The longest copyright term is in Mexico, which has life plus 100 years for all deaths since July 1928. A notable exception is the United States, where every book and tale published before 1929 is in the public domain; US copyrights last for 95 years for books originally published between 1929 and 1978 if the copyright was properly registered and maintained. For example:
9375-468: The definition of an "exempt" employee. Low-level working supervisors throughout American industries were reclassified as "executives" and lost overtime rights. The changes were sought by business interests, which claimed that the laws needed clarification and that few workers would be affected. The Bush administration called the new regulations "FairPay". However, other organizations, such as the AFL–CIO , claimed
9500-600: The effects of the 1966 extension, which raised the minimum wage in several economic sectors, found that the minimum wages increases led to a sharp increase in earnings without any adverse aggregate effects on employment. The legislation also substantially reduced the racial wage gap. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) prohibited employment discrimination against persons forty years of age or older. Some older workers were being denied health benefits based on their age and denied training opportunities prior to
9625-431: The employee customarily and regularly receives more than $ 30 a month in tips". If the employee's wage does not equal minimum wage, including tips, the employer must make up the difference. However, the employee must be allowed to keep all tips, either individually or through a tip pool. A tip pool may also contain only "employees who customarily and regularly receive tips". "The phrase 'customarily and regularly' signifies
9750-568: The employees fit "plainly and unmistakably" within the exemption's terms. The Fair Labor Standards Act applies to "any individual employed by an employer" but not to independent contractors or volunteers because they are not considered "employees" under the FLSA. Still, an employer cannot simply exempt workers from the Fair Labor Standards Act by calling them independent contractors, and many employers have illegally and incorrectly classified their workers as independent contractors. Some employers similarly mislabel employees as volunteers. Courts look at
9875-463: The employees. The bill, as proposed, would have applied to employers with 15 or more employees for employees as defined in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Public domain The public domain ( PD ) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived , or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds
10000-470: The exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission. As examples, the works of William Shakespeare , Ludwig van Beethoven , Miguel de Cervantes , Zoroaster , Lao Zi , Confucius , Aristotle , L. Frank Baum , Leonardo da Vinci and Georges Méliès are in the public domain either by virtue of their having been created before copyright existed, or by their copyright term having expired. Some works are not covered by
10125-654: The existing federal minimum wage. The major economic schools of thought - Classical economics , Keynesian economics , and the Austrian School - disagree about the importance and the effects of the minimum wage. According to a paper written in 2000 by Fuller and Geide-Stevenson, 73.5% (27.9% of which agreed with provisos) of American economists agreed that a minimum wage increases unemployment among unskilled and young workers, while 26.5% disagreed with this statement. Some economic research has shown that restaurant prices rise in response to minimum wage increases. Overall, there
10250-626: The federal minimum wage for other workers. Finally, S. 1737 would amend the Internal Revenue Code to extend through 2016 an increased limitation on the amount of investment that firms can immediately deduct from their taxable income—a limitation that mostly affects small- to medium-sized businesses. The Minimum Wage Fairness Act was introduced into the United States Senate on November 19, 2013 by Sen. Tom Harkin (D, IA) . On April 8, 2014, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that
10375-399: The federally-mandated level and thought that the minimum wage should be left up to the states. Heller said "I think there is a difference between North and South, East and West on what those minimum wages ought to be." Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) said he would not vote for the bill or a compromise. Collins' tried to argue that the Congressional Budget Office report predicting 500,000 jobs lost if
10500-501: The former of which refers to melody, notation or lyrics created by a composer or lyricist, including sheet music, and the latter referring to a recording performed by an artist, including a CD, LP, or digital sound file. Musical compositions fall under the same general rules as other works, and anything published before 1925 is considered public domain. Sound recordings, on the other hand, are subject to different rules and are not eligible for public domain status until 2021–2067, depending on
10625-419: The hour in 2013, 1.5 million were reported as earning exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage. About 1.8 million were reported as earning wages below the minimum. Together, these 3.3 million workers with wages at or below the minimum represent, respectively: 1.0% of the population, 1.6% of the labor force, 2.5% of all workers, and 4.3% of hourly workers. Many states already have a state minimum wage higher than
10750-496: The increase to $ 500,000 of the expensing allowance for business assets, including computer software; and (2) the treatment of qualified real property (i.e., leasehold improvement property, restaurant property, and retail improvement property) as depreciable business property. This summary is based largely on the summary provided by the Congressional Budget Office , as introduced in the Senate on November 19, 2013. This
10875-550: The job opportunities for workers with disabilities, so Section 14(c) is to be utilized only as needed to offset any opportunity loss. The majority of Section 14(c) workers are employed through work centers, but these individuals also work through businesses, schools, and hospitals. As of 2001, 424,000 employees with disabilities were receiving the subminimum wages through 5,600 employers under Section 14(c). More than 50% of workers with disabilities were paid $ 2.50 per hour or less by their employers due to reduced productivity caused by
11000-419: The launching point for transformative retellings such as Tom Stoppard 's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Troma Entertainment 's Tromeo and Juliet . Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. is a derivative of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa , one of thousands of derivative works based on the public domain painting. The 2018 film A Star is Born is a remake of the 1937 film of the same name , which
11125-499: The minimum wage because employers were still dealing the fallout of changes they needed to make because of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). Senate Republican Susan Collins (R-ME) tried to negotiate a compromise that centrist Republicans could agree to, but was unable to do so. Several Republicans, such as Senators Dean Heller (R-NV) and Rob Portman (R-OH), noted that their states already have minimum wages higher than
11250-537: The minimum wage for tipped employees until it equals 70% of the wage in effect under FLSA for other employees. The bill would direct the Secretary of Labor, 60 days before any increase in the minimum wage, to publish it in the Federal Register and on the United States Department of Labor 's website. The bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code to extend through taxable years beginning before 2017: (1)
11375-408: The minimum wage was increased to $ 10.10 also said that an increase to $ 9.00 would only lead to 100,000 jobs lost, but the argument did not seem to persuade her fellow centrists. Collins said "I'm confident that the votes are not there to pass a minimum wage increase up to $ 10.10, therefore, it seems to me to make sense for senators on both sides of the aisle to get together and see if we can come up with
11500-636: The minimum wage was outlawed in New Hampshire in 2015, in Maryland in 2016, and in Alaska in 2018. Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act states that with the approval of the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) certain employers can pay employees with disabilities below the minimum wage. In order for the subminimum wage to apply, the disability of the worker must directly affect their productivity in their given position. The employer must show that
11625-584: The most important piece of New Deal legislation since the Social Security Act of 1935 . In 1946, the US Supreme Court ruled in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. that preliminary work activities controlled by the employer and performed entirely for the employer's benefit are properly included as working time under the FLSA. In response, Congress passed the 1947 Portal-to-Portal Act, which narrowed
11750-475: The museum. The museum claimed that the photos were taken by their staff, and that photography within the museum by visitors was prohibited. Therefore, photos taken by the museum, even of material that itself had fallen into the public domain, were protected by copyright law and would need to be removed from the Wikimedia image repository. The court ruled that the photographs taken by the museum would be protected under
11875-617: The ocean of the public domain." Copyright law differs by country, and the American legal scholar Pamela Samuelson has described the public domain as being "different sizes at different times in different countries". Definitions of the boundaries of the public domain in relation to copyright, or intellectual property more generally, regard the public domain as a negative space; that is, it consists of works that are no longer in copyright term or were never protected by copyright law. According to James Boyle this definition underlines common usage of
12000-521: The passage of the ADEA. The act applies only to businesses employing more than twenty workers. The 1974 amendment expanded coverage to include other state and local government employees that were not previously covered. Domestic workers also became covered and the minimum wage was increased to $ 2.30 per hour in stages. The 1977 amendment increased the minimum wage in yearly increments through 1981 to $ 3.35 an hour. Changes were made involving tipped employees and
12125-401: The president's plan to destroy them." The National Retail Federation (NRF) opposed the bill, saying that "raising the standard of living for low-skill, low-wage workers is a valid goal," but that "there is clear evidence that mandate wage hikes undermine the job prospects for less skilled and part-time workers." The trade group also argued that this was the "least opportune moment" to increase
12250-740: The public domain should be: "it should be a place of sanctuary for individual creative expression, a sanctuary conferring affirmative protection against the forces of private appropriation that threatened such expression". Patterson and Lindberg described the public domain not as a "territory", but rather as a concept: "[T]here are certain materials – the air we breathe, sunlight, rain, space, life, creations, thoughts, feelings, ideas, words, numbers – not subject to private ownership. The materials that compose our cultural heritage must be free for all living to use no less than matter necessary for biological survival." The term public domain may also be interchangeably used with other imprecise or undefined terms such as
12375-602: The public domain" can be traced to mid-19th-century France to describe the end of copyright term . The French poet Alfred de Vigny equated the expiration of copyright with a work falling "into the sink hole of public domain" and if the public domain receives any attention from intellectual property lawyers it is still treated as little more than that which is left when intellectual property rights, such as copyright , patents , and trademarks , expire or are abandoned. In this historical context Paul Torremans describes copyright as a, "little coral reef of private right jutting up from
12500-536: The public domain" is correct only for published works; unpublished works are under federal copyright for at least the life of the author plus 70 years. Legal traditions differ on whether a work in the public domain can have its copyright restored. In the European Union, the Copyright Duration Directive was applied retroactively, restoring and extending the terms of copyright on material previously in
12625-435: The public domain, derivative works such as adaptations in book and film may increase noticeably, as happened with Frances Hodgson Burnett 's novel The Secret Garden , which became public domain in the US in 1977 and most of the rest of the world in 1995. By 1999, the plays of Shakespeare, all public domain, had been used in more than 420 feature-length films. In addition to straightforward adaptation, they have been used as
12750-416: The public domain, e.g. civil law of continental Europe . This may even "effectively prohibit any attempt by copyright owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights ". An alternative is for copyright holders to issue a license which irrevocably grants as many rights as possible to the general public. Real public domain makes licenses unnecessary, as no owner/author
12875-464: The public domain, to the extent that their expression in the form of software is not covered by copyright. Works created before the existence of copyright and patent laws also form part of the public domain. For example, the Bible and the inventions of Archimedes are in the public domain. However, translations or new formulations of these works may be copyrighted in themselves. Determination of whether
13000-874: The public domain. In the United Kingdom , for example, there is a perpetual crown copyright for the Authorized King James Version of the Bible . While the copyright has expired for the Peter Pan works by J. M. Barrie (the play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and the novel Peter and Wendy ) in the United Kingdom, it was granted a special exception under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (Schedule 6) that requires royalties to be paid for commercial performances, publications and broadcasts of
13125-405: The public domain. In the United States, the contents of patents are considered valid and enforceable for 20 years from the date of filing within the United States or 20 years from the earliest date of filing if under 35 USC 120, 121, or 365(c). However, the text and any illustration within a patent, provided the illustrations are essentially line drawings and do not in any substantive way reflect
13250-529: The public domain. Term extensions by the US and Australia generally have not removed works from the public domain, but rather delayed the addition of works to it. However, the United States moved away from that tradition with the Uruguay Round Agreements Act , which removed from the public domain many foreign-sourced works that had previously not been in copyright in the US for failure to comply with US-based formalities requirements . Consequently, in
13375-400: The public without regard for its intended use, it could become generic , and therefore part of the public domain. Because trademarks are registered with governments, some countries or trademark registries may recognize a mark, while others may have determined that it is generic and not allowable as a trademark in that registry. For example, the drug acetylsalicylic acid (2-acetoxybenzoic acid)
13500-509: The rate of one and one-half hours for each hour of employment for which overtime compensation would be required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Other employers may not compensate employees with paid time off in lieu of overtime pay. The amendment exempted state and local governments from paying overtime for special detail work performed by fire-protection, law-enforcement, and prison-security employees. The amendment exempted state and local governments from paying overtime to employees working in
13625-405: The rate of pay workers receiving special minimum wages to remain comparable to that of employees without disabilities. These requirements of subminimum wage review by the employers were added to Section 14(c) through a 1986 amendment. The intention of the section is to enable higher employment for people with disabilities. The concern with enforcing minimum wage was that there would be a decrease in
13750-518: The right holder cannot waive under applicable law, they are licensed in a way that mirrors as closely as possible the legal effect of a waiver. And finally, if there are any rights that the right holders cannot waive or license, they affirm that they will not exercise them and they will not assert any claim with respect to the use of the work, once again within the limits of applicable law. (...) In countries where moral rights exist but where they can be waived or not asserted, they are waived if asserted (e.g.
13875-491: The state or to an authors' association. The user does not have to seek permission to copy, present or perform the work, but does have to pay the fee. Typically the royalties are directed to support of living artists. In 2010, The Creative Commons proposed the Public Domain Mark (PDM) as symbol to indicate that a work is free of known copyright restrictions and therefore in the public domain. The public domain mark
14000-401: The story of Peter Pan within the UK, as long as Great Ormond Street Hospital (to whom Barrie gave the copyright) continues to exist. In a paying public domain regime, works that have entered the public domain after their copyright has expired, or traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions that have never been subject to copyright, are still subject to royalties payable to
14125-404: The term domain did not come into use until the mid-18th century, the concept can be traced back to the ancient Roman law , "as a preset system included in the property right system". The Romans had a large proprietary rights system where they defined "many things that cannot be privately owned" as res nullius , res communes , res publicae and res universitatis . The term res nullius
14250-461: The term public domain and equates the public domain to public property and works in copyright to private property . However, the usage of the term public domain can be more granular, including for example uses of works in copyright permitted by copyright exceptions . Such a definition regards work in copyright as private property subject to fair use rights and limitation on ownership. A conceptual definition comes from Lange, who focused on what
14375-463: The time of proposal, H.R. 2563 had two original cosponsors; two additional cosponsors added July 2009. In 2013, Representative Grayson reintroduced the Paid Vacation Act as H.R. 2096. Apart from the omission of the 2009 proposal's findings section, H.R. 2096 was virtually identical to H.R. 2563. Representative Grayson was the sole original sponsor for the bill, which was immediately referred to
14500-780: The tip credit. Partial overtime exemption was repealed in stages for certain hotel, motel, and restaurant employees. The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA), enacted in 1983, was designed to provide migrant and seasonal farm workers with protections concerning pay, working conditions, and work-related conditions to require farm labor contractors to register with the US Department of Labor and assure necessary protections for farm workers, agricultural associations, and agricultural employers. An amendment permitted state and local government employers to compensate their employees' overtime hours with paid time away from work in lieu of overtime pay. Paid time off must be given at
14625-509: The work of an employee with a disability is less productive than the standard set for employees without disabilities. If approved by the WHD, the rate of pay for the worker with a disability can correlate to their productivity in comparison to workers without disabilities. Every sixth months at a minimum, employers certified under Section 14(c) must review the special minimum wage of their hourly employees. Annually, Section 14(c) employers must also adjust
14750-775: The work to file a lawsuit for uncompensated time. Upon signing the act, President Harry Truman urged Congress to increase the minimum wage from 40 cents per hour to 65 cents per hour. The full effect of the FLSA of 1938 was postponed by the wartime inflation of the 1940s, which increased (nominal) wages to above the level specified in the Act. On October 26, 1949, President Truman signed the Fair Labor Standards Amendment Act of 1949 (ch. 736, Pub. L. 81–393 , 63 Stat. 910 , 29 U.S.C. § 201 ). The act defined an employee's "regular rate" of pay for purposes of computation of overtime pay. The act specified that employees were covered by
14875-459: The works of Jane Austen , Lewis Carroll , Machado de Assis , Olavo Bilac and Edgar Allan Poe are in the public domain worldwide as they all died over 100 years ago. Project Gutenberg , the Internet Archive and Wikisource make tens of thousands of public domain books available online as ebooks . People have been creating music for millennia. The first musical notation system,
15000-411: The world may be excluded from copyright law and may therefore be considered to be in the public domain in their respective countries. They may also be in the public domain in other countries as well. The legal scholar Melville Nimmer has written that "it is axiomatic that material in the public domain is not protected by copyright, even when incorporated into a copyrighted work". Before 1 March 1989, in
15125-457: Was deemed generic just three years later. Informal uses of trademarks are not covered by trademark protection. For example, Hormel , producer of the canned meat product Spam , does not object to informal use of the word "spam" in reference to unsolicited commercial email. However, it has fought attempts by other companies to register names including the word 'spam' as a trademark in relation to computer products, despite that Hormel's trademark
15250-404: Was defined as things not yet appropriated. The term res communes was defined as "things that could be commonly enjoyed by mankind, such as air, sunlight and ocean." The term res publicae referred to things that were shared by all citizens, and the term res universitatis meant things that were owned by the municipalities of Rome. When looking at it from a historical perspective, one could say
15375-472: Was enacted by the 75th Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. The Fair Labor Standards Act applies to "employees who are engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or who are employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce" unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. Generally, an employer with at least $ 500,000 of business or gross sales in
15500-552: Was introduced into the United States Senate during the 113th United States Congress . In the United States workers generally must be paid no less than the statutory minimum wage . As of July 2009, the federal government mandates a nationwide minimum wage level of $ 7.25 per hour, while some states and municipalities have set minimum wage levels higher than the federal level, with the highest state minimum wage being $ 9.47 per hour in Washington as of January 1, 2015. Among those paid by
15625-428: Was widespread, in compliance with the law, but expansions of those laws intended to benefit literary works and responding to commercial music recording technology's reproducibility have led to stricter rules. Relatively recently, a normative view that copying in music is not desirable and lazy has become popular among professional musicians. US copyright laws distinguish between musical compositions and sound recordings,
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