Senate confirmation hearings for Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, are scheduled to begin tomorrow. Unlike the prior nominee and unlike most of Trump’s cabinet secretaries, Acosta at least has relevant work experience, although it’s hard to imagine Acosta as an ardent defender of the nation’s working people.
But no matter who is Trump’s Labor Secretary, protecting workers’ basic rights is not high on the Trump administration’s agenda, and his team is likely to leave workers underpaid, undervalued, and unprotected for the next four years. The administration will be aided by Congress, which has joined the attack on workers, pushing mislabeled “right to work” laws, which let employees freeload off of unions’ services without having to pay for them.
The best case scenario is still pretty bad, and one that we have seen before, during the Bush administration: anti-worker policies; compliance assistance -- instead of investigations -- for recidivist scofflaw employers; and overall, flaccid and piecemeal enforcement of labor laws designed to protect workers.
While workers and their allies must fiercely combat these rollbacks and attacks, we should not spend the next four years playing only defense. After years of positive forward motion – with the federal government as a powerful champion, the Fight for $15 lighting a fire nationwide, and paid sick day laws spreading from city to city -- it’s critical that the momentum continue. The question is how.
To protect workers, we will have to rely on states and local governments. Just as states have led the charge in opposing the Executive Orders on immigration, states and cities should lead the way in bringing about justice at work.
This is already happening in many places. More than 40 states and localities are increasing their minimum wages this year, including traditionally Republican-voting states like Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas. And dozens of states have passed laws in recent years making it harder for employers to fatten their profit margins by misclassifying employees as independent contractors.
But more can—and must—be done.
Workers and their allies must continue to press for new laws at the state and local level, including wage hikes, increased overtime coverage, paid sick leave legislation, and laws to address changes in the modern workplace, like abusive scheduling practices and the gig economy.
To enforce existing laws, state and local labor departments should borrow tactics from law enforcement. After all, wage theft is theft. Just as the police use data and analysis to fight crime, state and local labor agencies could use data to proactively identify employers mistreating workers rather than waiting for workers to risk being fired by reporting violations. They can work with trusted community organizations that educate workers about their rights and refer complaints to government agencies.
Local prosecutors and state attorneys general should get in on the action, too. Although wage theft is usually non-violent, it is still worth prosecuting, like many property crimes. Authorities can pursue employers who cook the books to underpay workers, or employers whose criminal negligence leads to workplace fatalities. These people are as deserving of handcuffs as many non-violent offenders routinely facing arrest.
At the state and local level, government agencies can compel employers to treat workers fairly by denying or suspending business licenses of egregious wage cheats, or by using their purchasing power to award government contracts only to companies that treat their workers well. And even officials without enforcement powers can write reports to highlight unfair practices, or issue statements to call out bad actors.
Finally, cities and states – like their federal counterparts -- should firmly reject deceptive “right to work” laws, as New Hampshire did last month.
In the past, when the federal government has left workers to fend for themselves, officials closer to home have taken action. Massachusetts, for example, passed the first law limiting child labor and a establishing a minimum wage in the 1800s. After the Triangle factory fire in the early 1900s, New York pioneered the model of an activist labor department, with on-site inspections of garment shops. In the modern era, San Francisco led the way with the first paid sick leave law.
No matter who is at the helm federally, the way forward is clear: again, in 2017, state and local governments will have to lead.