State and Local Policies and Sectoral Labor Standards: From Individual Rights to Collective Power

Ken Jacobs, Rebecca Smith and Justin McBride

ILR Review, 2021, vol. 74, issue 5, 1132-1154

Abstract: The US enterprise-based collective bargaining regime creates substantial limitations for organizing workers in an economy in which supply chains are increasingly disaggregated in ways that reduce worker power. Federal labor law generally preempts state and local policies that directly address private-sector bargaining. State and local governments, however, are not preempted from setting general labor standards. The authors examine four cases of recent experiments using sectoral standards at the local level. The cases show that sectoral standards have the potential to expand new forms of social bargaining through state and local public policy in areas of the country where worker organizations are already strong. Sectoral standards can do so in ways that promote worker organization and build institutional power, especially when combined with robust worker organizing. In presenting these cases, the authors show both the potential power, and limitations, of federalism in US workplace regulation.

Keywords: collective bargaining; employment relations regimes; labor and employment policies; labor standards laws; labor union; unions; union prospects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00197939211020706 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:74:y:2021:i:5:p:1132-1154

DOI: 10.1177/00197939211020706

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().