{
  "id": "RL34013",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "RL34013",
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  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com, University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department",
  "versions": [
    {
      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 347320,
      "date": "2008-04-08",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-07T03:31:35.425227",
      "title": "The Federal Minimum Wage and American Samoa",
      "summary": "In 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was adopted, Congress appears to have given little consideration as to how its provisions might affect the various possessions and territories of the United States. The first off-shore jurisdiction to request exception from the FLSA was Puerto Rico, which, in 1940, along with the Virgin Islands, was given an exception under the act. Special industry committees were appointed to visit the Caribbean islands and to recommend minimum wage rates consistent with the insular economies.\nIn the wake of World War II, new attention was focused upon the Pacific islands. American Samoa, basically, had no industry other than harvesting of copra, the dried meat of the coconut, and an economy very different from the mainland. In the early 1950s, the Department of the Interior contracted with the Van Camp Sea Food Company to move onto the island and develop a fish processing plant. However, the FLSA minimum wage was regarded as too high to be competitive and, in 1956, Van Camp appealed to Congress to extend the Puerto Rican special industry committee (SIC) model to American Samoa. Thereafter, the Secretary of Labor would review economic conditions and establish minimum rates.\nThe SICs were admonished to reach \u201cas rapidly as is economically feasible without substantially curtailing employment\u201d the American standard under the FLSA. While the rates established by the committees were lower than those prevailing on the mainland, the device was regarded as temporary. During the 1980s and 1990s, special treatment of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands was phased out, and those islands came fully under the FLSA. Of the three jurisdictions, only American Samoa remained under the SIC structure.\nFish processing has become Samoa\u2019s primary private-sector industry. In early 2007, the minimum wage for the industry was $3.26 per hour: the federal minimum wage was $5.15 per hour. However, in late May 2007, Congress adopted H.R. 2206 (P.L. 110-28) which, through a series of step increases over several years, would raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 per hour. At the same time, the SIC for American Samoa was abolished and the insular minimum wage was raised (through a more prolonged series of step increases) until the federal minimum level, whatever that may ultimately become, might be reached.\nAt least since the 1950s, the companies involved in fish processing have suggested that, were the minimum wage to be raised to the national rate, they might consider leaving the island and operating out of a country where wage rates were more favorable. Now, with the new wage rate for American Samoa in effect, what will be the reaction of the tuna canning companies? Will they improve technology to raise labor productivity, change the type of production done in Samoa, absorb the new rates\u2014or migrate? And, if they were to migrate, what alternative employment might be available for the people of American Samoa?\nThis report will be updated as warranted.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORTS",
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    },
    {
      "source": "University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department",
      "sourceLink": "https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc822399/",
      "id": "RL34013_2007May22",
      "date": "2007-05-22",
      "retrieved": "2016-03-19T13:57:26",
      "title": "The Federal Minimum Wage and American Samoa",
      "summary": "This report discusses the federal minimum wage in American Samoa. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the minimum wage for the islands is fixed by a commission established by the Secretary of Labor. The minimum wage for fish processing is currently $3.26 an hour. Were Congress to extend the general (federal) minimum wage to American Samoa (and raise it to $7.25 an hour, as is currently proposed), the fish processing industry might absorb the increase, change the way it processes tuna, or migrate to other low-wage countries.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORT",
      "active": false,
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      "topics": [
        {
          "source": "LIV",
          "id": "Congress",
          "name": "Congress"
        },
        {
          "source": "LIV",
          "id": "Members of Congress",
          "name": "Members of Congress"
        },
        {
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          "id": "Congressional committee membership",
          "name": "Congressional committee membership"
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  "topics": [
    "Foreign Affairs"
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}