Enforcing Labor Standards in Partnership with Civil Society: Can Co-enforcement Succeed Where the State Alone Has Failed?

• DOI: 10.1177/0032329217702603
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Author: Janice Fine
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329217702603

Politics & Society

2017, Vol. 45(3) 359 –388

© 2017 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329217702603

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Article

Enforcing Labor Standards

in Partnership with Civil

Society: Can Co-enforcement

Succeed Where the State

Alone Has Failed?

Janice Fine

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Abstract

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 organizations in enforcement and the circumstances in which their effectiveness

can be maximized. It sets forth a set of scope conditions and mechanisms and examines

empirical cases of co-enforcement in Austin, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The main

findings are that co-enforcement is most enduring when (1) government agencies and

worker organizations recognize each other’s unique capacities, rather than attempt

to substitute for one another (2); the effort focuses on a specific industry; and (3) the

collaboration receives strong political support. Sustaining the impacts of co-enforcement

is found to require greater formalization of the partnership and funding streams.

Keywords

Labor standards enforcement, co-enforcement, co-production, tripartism, strategic

enforcement, wage theft

Corresponding Author:

Janice Fine, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 50 Labor Center Way, New Brunswick,

New Jersey 08903, USA.

Email: jrfine@smlr.rutgers.edu

702603PASXXX10.1177/0032329217702603Politics & SocietyFine

research-article2017

360 Politics & Society 45(3)

Enforcing the New Labor Standards Policies

The United States is in the midst of a bottom-up labor policy boom. Over the past ten

years, twenty-nine states and fifteen cities and counties have adopted minimum wage

laws higher than the federal level; five states, twenty-three cities, and one county have

enacted paid sick leave laws, six states have passed domestic workers’ bills of rights

and 100 cities and counties have “banned the box,” removing questions about convic-

tion history from job applications. Organizing efforts are also underway to tackle

unfair scheduling practices and paid family leave. Given the outcome of the 2016

presidential race, progressive action on policy will shift even more to the state and

local levels.

Most dramatic has been the rapid growth and success of the “Fight for Fifteen”

campaign. Following Seattle and San Francisco, in 2016, California and New York

became the first two states to enact a $15 minimum wage, and there are now dozens of

efforts underway across the country.

But how will the $15 minimum wage, unimaginable until very recently, and the

other innovative state and local policies enacted in recent years, be enforced? If con-

temporary rates of violation of federal minimum wage, overtime, and health and safety

rules are any indication, we should be worried.

In 2009, a pathbreaking survey of workers in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles

found that 26 percent1 suffered minimum wage violations in the previous week, and

over 76 percent of those who had labored more than forty hours in the prior week had

not been paid according to overtime rules.2 Most recently, a 2014 the Economic Policy

Institute estimated that 300,000 workers a month, in every state, suffered minimum-

wage violations.3

Health and safety violations are also unacceptably high. An average of ninety work-

ers died on the job every single week—more than eighteen workers a day, in 2014.4

Foreign-born Latinos were especially vulnerable, with more than fifteen deaths a week

on average, or two workers killed every single day of the year.5 Most workplace inju-

ries are preventable: in 2014 more than 6,000 OSHA citations were issued to busi-

nesses failing to provide full protections.

Research studies have established that vulnerable workers in low-wage sectors are

not filing complaints anywhere near proportionate to their actual experiences of wage

theft and health and safety violations. Enforcement systems premised on the assump-

tion that workers will come forward and make a formal complaint when they have a

problem can be expected to fall short.6

There is a widely held view that the solution has to involve increasing the quantity

and quality of investigators.7 Researchers have found a relationship between the rate

of inspections (or the size of inspectorates) and compliance outcomes and argued that

more inspection means more deterrence, giving rational firms incentives to comply.8

The US Wage and Hour Division is responsible for protecting wages and working

standards for approximately 135,000,000 workers in more than 7,300,000 firms. The

Obama inspectorate fielded 1,032 staff in 2013, the largest increase in many years, and

that number rose to 1,112 in 2014.9 According to OSHA, the combined state and federal