The articles in this volume grew out of a 2018 conference organized by the Rutgers School of Mana... more The articles in this volume grew out of a 2018 conference organized by the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and Cornell University’s ILR School to address questions regarding labor regulation at lower levels of government. During the extended period that federal reform has been blocked, enormous activity has taken place at the state and local levels in terms of both the passage of new employment laws and regulations as well as their administration and enforcement. Drawn from the larger set of papers presented at that conference, these articles focus on specific dimensions of the puzzle. This introduction paints the broader picture suggested by the conference and papers taken as a whole. The move toward federalism as a strategy, particularly as an alternative to organizing through the NLRA, while promising, is so far limited because it focuses on the substance of labor regulation exclusively, in isolation from the procedures through which work regulation is promulgate...
International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations
During the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying recession, millions of low-wage workers have become... more During the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying recession, millions of low-wage workers have become increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Limited scholarly attention, however, has been paid to the relationship between rising unemployment, labour standards violations, and government enforcement capacities during periods of economic recession. In this article, we begin to draw out these connections. First, we turn to the case of the Great Recession of 2008-2010 in the United States to examine the relationship between rising unemployment and minimum wage violations, using Current Population Survey (CPS) data to estimate minimum wage violation rates by industry and demographic group. We find that minimum wage violations rose in tandem with rising unemployment, and were shouldered by some groups of low-wage workers more than others, and that they were unexpectedly affected certain industries more than others. We then use an analysis of internal complaint data filed with the San Francisc...
Low-wage work in the US and many other places continues to be characterized by precarious and dan... more Low-wage work in the US and many other places continues to be characterized by precarious and dangerous conditions, vulnerable immigrant workforces, and problems of misclassification and wage theft. Several recent initiatives are seeking to demonstrate that conditions can be greatly improved even when governments lack the capacity to broadly enforce the law on the books. In co-enforcement approaches, for instance, municipal governments are enlisting worker and community organizations to improve enforcement of wage and hour laws. Similarly, some private regulatory initiatives are taking ‘worker-driven’ approaches that favor enforcement by locally trusted organizations rather than unreliable ‘checklist auditing’. In this article, we examine one exemplary case of each approach in the US – namely, the Seattle Office of Labor Standards and the Fair Food Program in Florida. Comparing these initiatives reveals a convergence on civil society linkages, locally grounded monitoring capacities,...
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2017
Given the finding that the marginalized are less politically engaged, we examine those who are ar... more Given the finding that the marginalized are less politically engaged, we examine those who are arguably the most marginalized—the undocumented—and ask: what underwrites recent cases where the undocumented have been politically engaged in meaningful and substantive ways? Additionally, how does this compare with the existing literature on the practice of citizenship for those with formal rights? And what are the implications for our understanding of political participation in the contemporary USA? We seek to address these questions by examining cases where undocumented immigrants act like citizens even though they lack formal political rights. Our cases deviate from previous literature which argues that more marginalized people participate less and that those without formal rights engage in contentious politics in lieu of “normal,” institutional politics. Our analysis of the DREAMers and of immigrant worker centers helps us rethink this traditional distinction between “normal” and contentious politics. Moving beyond a focus on the specific actions that fall into each category, we instead emphasize how the context for these actions is crucial to understanding the foundations of political participation. In particular, we argue that the same “normal” political actions taken by citizens versus noncitizens reveals different foundations underneath; for those without formal rights, what underwrites participation in “normal” and contentious politics alike is what we call grassroots citizenship. We examine how the political participation of undocumented workers and DREAMers takes place within immigrant organizations and how it relies on three pillars: solidarity, critical analysis, and collective action. While previous literature has emphasized the urban and local nature of active, alternative citizenships, our cases operate at multiple scales, demonstrating how grassroot citizenship can be leveraged and “scaled up” to state and national levels. Additionally, through an analysis of grassroots citizenship, we get some purchase on the question of why politicians sometimes listen to people who cannot vote.
Over the last decade, cities, counties, and states across the United States have enacted higher m... more Over the last decade, cities, counties, and states across the United States have enacted higher minimum wages, paid sick leave and family leave, domestic worker protections, wage theft laws, “Ban the Box” removal of questions about conviction history from job applications, and fair scheduling laws. Nevertheless, vulnerable workers still do not trust government to come forward and report labor law violations. The article argues that while increasing the size of the labor inspectorate and engaging in strategic enforcement are necessary, they are not sufficient. It argues that co-enforcement, in which government partners with organizations that have industry expertise and relationships with vulnerable workers, has the potential to manage the shifting and decentralized structures of twenty-first-century production, which were explicitly designed to evade twentieth-century laws and enforcement capabilities. The article aims to contribute to a broader understanding of the role of organiza...
Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, 2016
As state governments expand the use of private contractors to provide public services, they creat... more As state governments expand the use of private contractors to provide public services, they create challenges to performance management and accountability. Using the framework of accountability as a social relationship, we evaluate New Jersey’s oversight practices. We combine data from interviews and observation with a comprehensive analysis of the institutional framework. We raise two key questions. First, what causes New Jersey to neglect its performance management responsibilities? Second, how can New Jersey and other states strengthen their performance management and accountability practices? We posit that the state must retain some level of internal monitoring capacity as a core element of government. Effective oversight requires rebuilding administrative capacity and implementing ongoing, flexible, relational contract management that involves key stakeholders and does not put the entire burden of performance measurement on direct service providers. In this way, performance man...
Labor inspection is a central response to the tremendous gap between formal regulations and outco... more Labor inspection is a central response to the tremendous gap between formal regulations and outcomes for workers throughout the world. Scholarly and policy debates on labor regulation have focused on improving the targeting of enforcement, changing strategies of street‐level agents, and creating private alternatives to state regulation. This paper argues that these proposals, while important, fail to systematically incorporate the potential contributions of worker organizations and, as a result, overlook opportunities for co‐enforcing labor standards, a key element of labor inspection. By contrast, we develop a framework to analyze the relationships between worker organizations and state regulators that underpin co‐enforcement. We ground this framework empirically in comparative cases, set in Argentina and the United States, presenting two cases of co‐enforcement in highly different institutional contexts. In so doing, we seek to illuminate key attributes of labor inspection and gui...
The articles in this volume grew out of a 2018 conference organized by the Rutgers School of Mana... more The articles in this volume grew out of a 2018 conference organized by the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and Cornell University’s ILR School to address questions regarding labor regulation at lower levels of government. During the extended period that federal reform has been blocked, enormous activity has taken place at the state and local levels in terms of both the passage of new employment laws and regulations as well as their administration and enforcement. Drawn from the larger set of papers presented at that conference, these articles focus on specific dimensions of the puzzle. This introduction paints the broader picture suggested by the conference and papers taken as a whole. The move toward federalism as a strategy, particularly as an alternative to organizing through the NLRA, while promising, is so far limited because it focuses on the substance of labor regulation exclusively, in isolation from the procedures through which work regulation is promulgate...
International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations
During the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying recession, millions of low-wage workers have become... more During the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying recession, millions of low-wage workers have become increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Limited scholarly attention, however, has been paid to the relationship between rising unemployment, labour standards violations, and government enforcement capacities during periods of economic recession. In this article, we begin to draw out these connections. First, we turn to the case of the Great Recession of 2008-2010 in the United States to examine the relationship between rising unemployment and minimum wage violations, using Current Population Survey (CPS) data to estimate minimum wage violation rates by industry and demographic group. We find that minimum wage violations rose in tandem with rising unemployment, and were shouldered by some groups of low-wage workers more than others, and that they were unexpectedly affected certain industries more than others. We then use an analysis of internal complaint data filed with the San Francisc...
Low-wage work in the US and many other places continues to be characterized by precarious and dan... more Low-wage work in the US and many other places continues to be characterized by precarious and dangerous conditions, vulnerable immigrant workforces, and problems of misclassification and wage theft. Several recent initiatives are seeking to demonstrate that conditions can be greatly improved even when governments lack the capacity to broadly enforce the law on the books. In co-enforcement approaches, for instance, municipal governments are enlisting worker and community organizations to improve enforcement of wage and hour laws. Similarly, some private regulatory initiatives are taking ‘worker-driven’ approaches that favor enforcement by locally trusted organizations rather than unreliable ‘checklist auditing’. In this article, we examine one exemplary case of each approach in the US – namely, the Seattle Office of Labor Standards and the Fair Food Program in Florida. Comparing these initiatives reveals a convergence on civil society linkages, locally grounded monitoring capacities,...
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2017
Given the finding that the marginalized are less politically engaged, we examine those who are ar... more Given the finding that the marginalized are less politically engaged, we examine those who are arguably the most marginalized—the undocumented—and ask: what underwrites recent cases where the undocumented have been politically engaged in meaningful and substantive ways? Additionally, how does this compare with the existing literature on the practice of citizenship for those with formal rights? And what are the implications for our understanding of political participation in the contemporary USA? We seek to address these questions by examining cases where undocumented immigrants act like citizens even though they lack formal political rights. Our cases deviate from previous literature which argues that more marginalized people participate less and that those without formal rights engage in contentious politics in lieu of “normal,” institutional politics. Our analysis of the DREAMers and of immigrant worker centers helps us rethink this traditional distinction between “normal” and contentious politics. Moving beyond a focus on the specific actions that fall into each category, we instead emphasize how the context for these actions is crucial to understanding the foundations of political participation. In particular, we argue that the same “normal” political actions taken by citizens versus noncitizens reveals different foundations underneath; for those without formal rights, what underwrites participation in “normal” and contentious politics alike is what we call grassroots citizenship. We examine how the political participation of undocumented workers and DREAMers takes place within immigrant organizations and how it relies on three pillars: solidarity, critical analysis, and collective action. While previous literature has emphasized the urban and local nature of active, alternative citizenships, our cases operate at multiple scales, demonstrating how grassroot citizenship can be leveraged and “scaled up” to state and national levels. Additionally, through an analysis of grassroots citizenship, we get some purchase on the question of why politicians sometimes listen to people who cannot vote.
Over the last decade, cities, counties, and states across the United States have enacted higher m... more Over the last decade, cities, counties, and states across the United States have enacted higher minimum wages, paid sick leave and family leave, domestic worker protections, wage theft laws, “Ban the Box” removal of questions about conviction history from job applications, and fair scheduling laws. Nevertheless, vulnerable workers still do not trust government to come forward and report labor law violations. The article argues that while increasing the size of the labor inspectorate and engaging in strategic enforcement are necessary, they are not sufficient. It argues that co-enforcement, in which government partners with organizations that have industry expertise and relationships with vulnerable workers, has the potential to manage the shifting and decentralized structures of twenty-first-century production, which were explicitly designed to evade twentieth-century laws and enforcement capabilities. The article aims to contribute to a broader understanding of the role of organiza...
Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, 2016
As state governments expand the use of private contractors to provide public services, they creat... more As state governments expand the use of private contractors to provide public services, they create challenges to performance management and accountability. Using the framework of accountability as a social relationship, we evaluate New Jersey’s oversight practices. We combine data from interviews and observation with a comprehensive analysis of the institutional framework. We raise two key questions. First, what causes New Jersey to neglect its performance management responsibilities? Second, how can New Jersey and other states strengthen their performance management and accountability practices? We posit that the state must retain some level of internal monitoring capacity as a core element of government. Effective oversight requires rebuilding administrative capacity and implementing ongoing, flexible, relational contract management that involves key stakeholders and does not put the entire burden of performance measurement on direct service providers. In this way, performance man...
Labor inspection is a central response to the tremendous gap between formal regulations and outco... more Labor inspection is a central response to the tremendous gap between formal regulations and outcomes for workers throughout the world. Scholarly and policy debates on labor regulation have focused on improving the targeting of enforcement, changing strategies of street‐level agents, and creating private alternatives to state regulation. This paper argues that these proposals, while important, fail to systematically incorporate the potential contributions of worker organizations and, as a result, overlook opportunities for co‐enforcing labor standards, a key element of labor inspection. By contrast, we develop a framework to analyze the relationships between worker organizations and state regulators that underpin co‐enforcement. We ground this framework empirically in comparative cases, set in Argentina and the United States, presenting two cases of co‐enforcement in highly different institutional contexts. In so doing, we seek to illuminate key attributes of labor inspection and gui...
Uploads
Papers by Janice Fine