The Changing Politics of Workers’ Rights

• In Event: Regulating Economic Competition in the Era of Populist Politics

Abstract

In response to the “ossification” and “drift” of New Deal-era labor law, a new politics of workers’ rights has emerged in new venues (state and local levels), focusing on new governing institutions (employment law), working through new organizational forms (alt-labor), and employing new strategies. These developments have invigorated but also complicated the labor movement, generating new problems without solving the problems produced by labor law’s drift in the first place. Using original quantitative and qualitative data, I document the rise of state-level employment laws since the 1960s, examine the growth of alt-labor groups, discuss the strategic adaptation of private sector labor unions, and consider the implications of these developments for the changing politics of workers’ rights. I also use the case to extrapolate more general hypotheses about the feedback effects of “policy drift.”

Author

• Daniel Galvin, Northwestern University