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Worker centers, such as the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE), the Seattle Office of Labor Standards (OLS), the NYC Office of Labor and Policy Standards, the Minneapolis Labor Standards Enforcement Division, and the Chicago Office of Labor Standards, are leading the way in innovative approaches to labor law enforcement. These centers are working with local policies, partnerships with worker justice organizations, and sectoral worker standards boards to strengthen labor standards protections. By collaborating with government agencies, unions, and community organizations, these centers are improving job quality in low-wage sectors and extending employment protections to historically disadvantaged workers. The article highlights successful examples of co-enforcement in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Chicago, and emphasizes the need for a proactive and sector-specific approach to enforcement. It also suggests the establishment of sectoral boards and policies that empower workers and facilitate their participation in enforcing standards. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of enforcement in protecting worker rights and the ongoing efforts to improve labor standards. [Extracted from the article]

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 promulgated and enforced. The most likely place to look for reforms that will give the new labor federalism institutional support and stability comparable to that of the New Deal collective bargaining regime at its apogee is in their implementation and enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significant characteristics of building workers centers and construction unions are discussed. The opportunities for collaboration between the two as well as conflicts between them are illustrated with examples.

The author asserts that unions need to find alternative means of reaching workers than the traditional work-site method due to the change in the structure of employment in the US, with more of the work-force being employed in part-time, low-wage jobs. Examples of community-based labor organizing in Baltimore, Maryland and Stamford, Connecticut are used to evaluate how unions can develop new strategies such as multiunion alliances between community organizations, religious institutions and ethnic groups to promote labor relations on behalf of workers.

The role of community unions that have emerged over the last twenty years is examined and the issues of work and wages of low-wage workforce are highlighted. Community unions have so far had greater success at raising wages and improving working conditions via public policy rather than direct labor market intervention because low-wage workers in America have greater political than economic power.

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, and enforceable penalties. The cases differ in their bases of power and the expected role of the state, though the latter difference is perhaps not as stark as it initially seems. The comparison also suggests some challenges and opportunities for extending these models into new settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]