Turning Rules into Resources: Worker Enactment of Labor Standards and Why It Matters for Regulatory Federalism

Natasha Iskander and Nichola Lowe

ILR Review, 2021, vol. 74, issue 5, 1258-1282

Abstract: Labor standards are not just enforced; they are enacted, and often in ways that are different from their stated intention. This distinction creates an opening to consider the ways that frontline workers extend and repurpose enforcement practices. Drawing on qualitative research in two US cities, the authors focus on Latino immigrant construction workers to identify the strategies they use to rework formal safety mandates to advance technical knowledge, create skill-based alliances across organizational hierarchies, and protect career trajectories. These resourcing strategies were present in both locations, but workers’ ability to affect the quality of their jobs through the collective enactment of labor standards varied significantly by city and depended on the enforcement practices in play. Workers’ attention to these localized resourcing opportunities suggests possibilities for progressive innovation at the multiple levels of government driving emerging research on regulation and federalism.

Keywords: labor standards; Latino immigrants; safety; construction; North Carolina; Philadelphia (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/10.1177/0019793921994822 (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:1258-1282

DOI: 10.1177/0019793921994822

Access Statistics for this article

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