CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE INNOVATION THROUGH STATE LABOR LAW

This Essayexplores recent efforts by worker organizations to transform labor policy in states, as well as countermobilizationsby business and conservative groups. It focuses on two particularly promising efforts: the development of worker standards boards and pro-labor changes to state constitutional law. It shows why, as a matter of political economy, such reforms havebeen achievable at the state and local levels, but not the federal level, and explores the potential of state reforms to build greater economic and political power for working people, notwithstandinglimits imposed by federal preemption doctrine.Ultimately, thisEssayarguesthat these recent innovations in state labor law have the potential not only to reshape U.S.labor policy but also to serve as a model for a more democratic approach to administrative governance and constitutional law generally