Labor protection

In recent years, cities, counties, and other localities have become innovators and leaders in standing up for working people. Responding to increased inequality, degraded working conditions, and insufficient or inconsistent worker protections at the state and federal level, localities have in many cases joined states as the “laboratories” of experimentation (as Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis described) in relation to workplace matters.1 A number of localities have come to view protecting workers and improving their conditions as part of their core municipal function. This is a joint project with the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program and Local Progress. This report provides an overview of some of the most noteworthy ways in which localities have taken action on behalf of working people in recent years.