Meeting mandates in a new labor federalism: Opportunities and challenges

This dissertation examines how the rise of wage and hour laws across federal, state, and local governments have reshaped worker protections in the United States. As union membership has fallen to less than 6% of private sector workers, millions of Americans now depend on employment law and government enforcement agencies to guarantee fair pay and working conditions. However, these agencies remain chronically under-resourced — federal investigators are at their lowest numbers since at least 1973, states similarly lack capacity, and billions of dollars in wages are stolen from workers each year. Drawing on (a) interviews with leaders from 15 state and local labor standards enforcement agencies, (b) a survey of labor standards investigators across 9 agencies, (c) novel databases of civil service classifications and minimum wage laws, (d) analysis of agency enforcement data, and (e) estimates of minimum wage underpayment, I seek to better understand how federalism has created both opportunities and challenges for workers, employers, and agencies tasked with enforcing employment standards. American federalism has provided significant yet decidedly uneven opportunities for substantive improvements in labor standards, as well as for policy and procedural experimentation around implementation and enforcement. Implementing labor standards laws at the state and local levels brings with it both enduring challenges and potential opportunities related to a) budgeting, staffing, and capacity; b) specific enforcement practices and strategy; c) the coordination of enforcement across agencies; and d) the creation and diffusion of legislative models. Organizing, coalition-building, and policymaking at the local level provide a necessary avenue to address these challenges and ultimately to uphold the rights of workers given today’s political and economic realities.