[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 29, Volume 3]
[Revised as of July 1, 2004]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 29CFR784.102]

[Page 670]
 
                             TITLE 29--LABOR
 
         CHAPTER V--WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
 
PART 784_PROVISIONS OF THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT APPLICABLE TO FISHING 
AND OPERATIONS ON AQUATIC PRODUCTS--Table of Contents
 
Subpart B_Exemptions Provisions Relating to Fishing and Aquatic Products
 
Sec. 784.102  General legislative history.

    (a) As orginally enacted in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act 
provided an exemption from both the minimum wage requirements of section 
6 and the overtime pay requirements of section 7 which was made 
applicable to ``any employee employed in the catching, taking, 
harvesting, cultivating, or farming of any kind of fish, shellfish, 
crustacea, sponges, seaweeds or other aquatic forms of animal and 
vegetable life, including the going to and returning from work and 
including employment in the loading, unloading, or packing of such 
products for shipment or in propagating, processing, marketing, 
freezing, canning, curing, storing, or distributing the above products 
or by products thereof'' (52 Stat. 1060, sec. 13(a)(5)).
    (b) In 1949 the minimum wage was extended to employees employed in 
canning such products by deleting the word ``canning'' from the above 
exemption, adding the parenthetical phrase ``(other than canning)'' 
after the word ``processing'' therein, and providing a new exemption in 
section 13(b)(4), from overtime pay provisions only, applicable to ``any 
employee employed in the canning of any kind of fish, shellfish, or 
other aquatic forms of animal or vegetable life, or any byproduct 
thereof''. All other employees included in the original minimum wage and 
overtime exemption remained within it (63 Stat. 910).
    (c) By the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961, both these 
exemptions were further revised to read as set forth in Sec. Sec. 
784.100 and 784.101. The effect of this change was to provide a means of 
equalizing the application of the Act as between canning employees and 
employees employed in other processing, marketing, and distributing of 
aquatic products on shore, to whom minimum wage protection, formerly 
provided only for canning employees, was extended by this action. The 
1961 amendments, however, left employees employed in fishing, in fish 
farming, and in related occupations concerned with procurement of 
aquatic products from nature, under the existing exemption from minimum 
wages as well as overtime pay.