The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards

Written by Gordon Lafer, Ph.D.

In early 2010, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the Citizens United case opened the gateway to unlimited corporate spending on politics.  A flood of new corporate funding poured into state legislative races that fall, with the new corporate-funded legislatures taking office in early 2011.  This report documents how those legislators set about seeking to lower wage standards and restrict employee rights across a wide range of policy measures – including the minimum wage, child labor, occupational safety laws, unemployment insurance, unionization and construction industry standards.  This report details how these initiatives originated in national corporate lobbying organizations and then were rolled out in cookie-cutter fashion in states across the country.  What was experienced by people in each state as a local initiative and local debate is shown here to be part of a 50-state strategy to tilt economic power away from working Americans and toward corporate employers.