Labor Policy & Geographic Inequality
Hiba Hafiz
Boston College Law School
Empirical evidence of employer power in labor markets has drawn national attention and concern. Employers’ exercise of their buyer power suppresses wages, benefits, and the quality of work for American workers, and impacts workers of color, women, and low-wage workers most. But employer power is particularly pervasive and intractable in distressed and rural labor markets. Distressed and rural labor markets—labor markets in rural areas and deindustrialized cities, suburbs, and towns that have suffered declining growth or contraction—are characterized by high labor market concentration levels, scarce employment, and low levels of labor market regulation that entrench employer power. These characteristics present unique legal and regulatory challenges that this seminar will explore. The course materials and seminar discussions will concentrate on the limitations of current law and labor market regulation in these markets and consider a suite of legal and policy solutions to combatting employer power and strengthening worker power as well as establishing work as a means of accessing economic opportunity in the context of geographic inequality. In analyzing the limitations of current legal protections, the seminar will concentrate both on substantive rights and obligations imposed by current law as well as the role and ability of labor market institutions— governmental agencies, unions, corporate forms, non-profits, and civil society organizations—in ensuring or undermining those rights and obligations.