From the closing decades of the 19th century to the opening ones of the 20th, workers demonstrated, picketed and striked for better wages and working conditions. After the great stock market crash of 1929 and the start of the Great Depression, their efforts were made more complicated, as millions found themselves out of work of any kind. President Franklin Roosevelt first attempted to remedy the situation with the National Industrial Recovery Act, which allowed cartels and monopolies, in hopes they improve the economy, but that when that was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Congress got working on a new effort.

On this day, June 30, in 1936, Congress passed The Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, a more limited effort that, among others, mandated that government contractors and their employees be limited to a standard eight-hour day and 40-hour workweek. Congress was directly responding to the demands of labor unions in passing the Act, among the first laws of its kind.

The Act also restricted the use of laborers under the age of 16, and set the minimum wage equal to the prevailing wage as determined by the Secretary of Labor. These standards were expanded to all employees in private as well as public industry by the Fair Labor Standards Act two yeas later.