{"id":648,"date":"2008-09-21T16:01:44","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T21:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=648"},"modified":"2008-09-22T07:07:04","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T12:07:04","slug":"protecting-workers-in-a-federalist-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/09\/protecting-workers-in-a-federalist-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting Workers in a Federal System"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Paul Secunda <\/a>has a new pair of working papers <\/a>on SSRN, entitled “The Ironic Necessity for State Protection of Workers” and “More of Less: The Limits of Minimalism and Self-Regulation.”\u00a0 These are his opening and closing statements in a debate with Jeffrey Hirsch <\/a>for PENNumbra<\/a>.\u00a0 Paul takes the\u00a0position that the\u00a0federal government is doing a poor job of protecting American workers, noting a lack of capacity or will to engage in robust enforcement of\u00a0statutes likes the National Labor Relations Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act.\u00a0 As a result, he would like to see states play a more active role in workplace regulation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These short papers touch on an important, longstanding debate in federalism theory: whether each field of social regulation ought to be\u00a0handled exclusively at\u00a0a particular level of government (federal, state, or local), or whether shared responsibilities ought to be the norm.\u00a0 The exclusivity model was dominant through much of this nation’s history,\u00a0but was almost entirely supplanted in the middle decades of the last century by a cooperative federalism model.\u00a0 As someone who worries a lot about transparency and accountability in government, I confess to some unease about the opaque, complex federal-state-local arrangements that now predominate in nearly every major field of public policy (environmental protection, crime, health care, education, housing, transportation, etc.).\u00a0 On the other hand, if the mechanisms of democratic accountability do not operate well, the exclusivity model can lend itself to agency capture, bureaucratic inertia, and regulatory stagnation–which is\u00a0(I take it) how\u00a0Paul would characterize the present state of federal\u00a0labor and employment law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Secunda has a new pair of working papers on SSRN, entitled “The Ironic Necessity for State Protection of Workers” and “More of Less: The Limits of Minimalism and Self-Regulation.”\u00a0 These are his opening and closing statements in a debate with Jeffrey Hirsch for PENNumbra.\u00a0 Paul takes the\u00a0position that the\u00a0federal government is doing a poor 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