I’m learning about employment law, the FLSA (Fair Labor and Standards Act), specifically, and the book I am reading states, “An employee is covered by the FLSA as an individual if at any time during the workweek that employee is engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, or in the production or handling of goods for transportation in interstate or foreign commerce.”
I think I may be overthinking this, but I really feel clueless. What does it mean for an employee to engage, “in interstate or foreign commerce, or in the production or handling of goods for transportation in the interstate or foreign commerce.”? Why is this the deciding factor in whether an employee is eligible?
Can someone break down what this means for me? Do you have examples of who would be covered under this? Who wouldn’t?
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There isn’t a hard definition of “interstate commerce”. The vast, vast majority of jobs are engaged in interstate commerce and so its easier to state what *isn’t* interstate commerce than what is. A worker is not engaged in interstate commerce if *all* of the following are true:
1) The business they work for does not gross more than $500,000 in revenue each year.
2) They are not providing a personal service (such as a butler or gardener).
3) They have never worked on anything that required goods, information, or services to move between states.
In the modern world, this means that the only jobs that are not engaged in interstate commerce are very small workshops that are manufacturing something that is only used locally, such as 3 employee business that makes small wooden fishing boats that are sold to locals for use in a nearby lake. If that boat manufacturer has ever sold a boat to a hotel then it is engaged in interstate commerce.
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