Question

In a paragraph or two please explain why Federal Government seeks to establish standards for employee work hours and compensation? Should the Federal Government (or state governments) regulate this area? Why or why not.

Answer 1

The reason why Federal government seeks to establish standards for employee work hours or even the compensation given to them is that any and every business seeks to earn more and more profit at the end of the day. In order to increase their profits, they need to increase their productivity. Now the employees are human beings and not capital labour such as machines and equipments that can work for long hours and even endlessly at times.
Now companies sometimes do not provide a safe and healthy working environment for the workers and exploit them in order to increase their productivity. The employees, being desperate for work, do the work despite the unhealthy working conditions.
Now if the Government steps in such a scenario, it makes it mandatory for the companies to maintain and build a safe environment for the workers where they are fairly paid and not exploited in any way.
For example, the government regulates the payment of wages by an act which states that employees shall be provided remedy in case illegal reductions are made from their wages. It regulates timely payment of the wages and eliminates malpractices of short payment.
The government can regulate with the help of minimum wages acts that establish standards for the minimum payment given to the workers so that no worker is under-paid than the amount of effort they put in and the work they do.
Therefore, yes. The Federal Government should regulate this area to protect the worker's interests and provide them with a safe and healthy working environment.