Economic Inequality and the Violation Economy

Abstract

The rise of the service economy, low‐wage jobs, and precarious employment practices are often noted as the core drivers of contemporary inequality. This article argues that the new economy should be understood alongside a policy regime that provides tremendous leeway for employers to routinely flout labor regulations, and some of the fissuring of the labor market is due to the ability of employers to engage in illegal activity. This article describes four policy areas to explore how employer violations impact the economics of employment: (1) union violations and the National Labor Relations Act; (2) wage theft and the Fair Labor Standards Act; (3) the categorization of temporary workers and independent contractors; (4) and workplace safety violations under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Litigating Policy Drift: Frozen Categories and Thresholds in Court

“…If income thresholds for overtime eligibility remain static despite inflation, fewer workers are eligible to collect premium pay (Galvin 2016). Hence, overtime regulations with fixed numerical thresholds undermine employee protections over time (Koenig 2018). Interval freezing might also result in a fixed budget for staff or a predetermined number of full-time-equivalent employees charged with administering certain rules despite increasing coverage or population needs; for example, the regulatory agency created to enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), today has the same number of investigators as it did in 1948 but six times the caseload (Galvin 2016).…”

“…With a few notable exceptions (Barnes 2008;Snead 2022), scholarship on policy drift has focused on the political causes and consequences of drift, rather than legal imperatives (Béland 2007;Carpenter 2010;Hacker 2004a;Hacker, Pierson, and Thelen 2015;Koenig 2018;Rocco 2017). Separated, veto-prone systems with super-majoritarian thresholds for legislating are prone to drift because determined legislative minorities can easily block efforts to update policies or enact new ones (Hacker and Pierson 2014).…”

The legacy of immigration policies and employment exclusion: Assessing the relationship between employment exclusions and immigrant health

“…Workplace exclusions disproportionately affect immigrant workers who are funneled into jobs with poor working conditions ( Moyce & Schenker, 2018 ; Siqueira et al, 2014 ). This includes exploitative work conditions where violations such as wage theft occur and dangerous work environments persist ( Gurrola & Ayon, 2018 ; Koenig, 2018 ).…”