Quote from Joseph Petrecca, Assistant Commissioner, NJDOL Wage and Hour Division and Contract Compliance
Quote from Joseph Petrecca, Assistant Commissioner, NJDOL Wage and Hour Division and Contract Compliance
quote from Brian Walsh J.D., Director, City of Minneapolis, Labor Standards Enforcement Division, Dept of Civil Rights
quote from Brian Walsh J.D., Director, City of Minneapolis, Labor Standards Enforcement Division, Dept of Civil Rights
Quote from Mary Donachy, Direct Investigations Manager/Policy Advisor VI, Colorado Division of Labor Standards and Statistics
Quote from Mary Donachy, Direct Investigations Manager/Policy Advisor VI, Colorado Division of Labor Standards and Statistics

SECLAP - Strategic Enforcement Community of Learning and Practice

The Strategic Enforcement Community of Learning and Practice (SECLAP) is a community of state and local labor standards enforcement agencies working to share innovative approaches to 21st century enforcement challenges. Through SECLAP’s quarterly sessions, participants from 14 agencies engage with their peers to work on difficult puzzles, share lessons and strategies, and coordinate efforts across jurisdictions. Each SECLAP session is interactive and discussion-based, with a different agency (or agencies, in collaboration) leading the conversation.

Session Agendas:

Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about SECLAP.

GEL - Governance and Enforcement Lab  

GEL was created to be a space where a small group of organizers and allied policy wonks can think together about how we can more effectively leverage labor policy and enforcement work at the local level to build worker power and organization. During GEL sessions, participants drill down on how things are working now and how we might keep refining our strategies to more powerfully utilize enforcement of these policies to create structures for organizing and bargaining and build worker and organizational power in order to dramatically improve job quality across low wage, predominantly BIPOC sectors.  

The GEL sessions incorporate:

  • “Deep dive” workshopping where one or two organizers discuss their campaigns and enforcement partnerships. They share lessons so far, their strategic puzzles, and their biggest questions.
  • Brainstorming and planning around what meaningful partnerships with agencies actually could look like and accomplish.
  • Identifying needs around research, legal strategy, and other support that could strengthen campaigns in ways that build worker power and organizational leverage, and jointly reach out to people and organizations that could provide that support.

Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about GEL. 

GEL session schedule:
5/2/2024 - Empowering States & Localities: Making Federal Funds Work for our Workers & Communities

After years of dogged advocacy a Reagan-era guidance that prohibited local jobs standards for federal funding has been overturned! The newly-updated ‘uniform guidance’ (wonky name for a revolutionary tool!) opens a powerful new strategy for organizations at the state and local levels to attach equity and job quality standards to federal funds being spent in our communities.  With over $2 Trillion in new Infrastructure Funding coming into our communities over the next decade, this new guidance is a game-changer.  Local Opportunities Coalition, Jobs to Move America (JMA), and Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers co-hosted this webinar for close to 100 advocates to learn about this new ruling and what this means for our organizing and communities.  We heard from Brad Lander, NYC Comptroller & Local Progress Co-Founder and Leone Jose Bicchieri from Working Family Solidarity in Chicago about how they are planning for this work.  Madeline Janis, Anna Smith, and Valerie Lizárraga from Jobs to Move America shared which new worker protections the guidelines mandates, encourages and allows. Janice Fine from Workplace Justice Lab shared key steps to start this work.

For a session recording click here

For session slides click here

For 5 key steps to start this work click here

For Uniform Guidance brochure click here

12/4/23 - Winning Strong Community Benefits Agreements in Infrastructure Projects: What We’re Learning

Funding and financing streams for Department of Energy infrastructure projects now require companies to submit Community Benefits Plans with their application that will account for 20% of the project‘s final bid score. We heard from Doug Bloch about the strong language the Department of Energy has laid out about exactly what community and worker benefits they expect to be included -- and the role our groups should play in enforcement. This provides a major opportunity for community and labor groups to win concessions to ensure deeper equity commitments, high road hiring practices, and community enforcement programs on these projects. We heard from Miranda Nelson about the first multi-state Community Benefits Agreement won by Jobs to Move America and partners from New Flyer Bus Company.  She shared their campaign strategy and leverage points, what they won in the CBA and how the company is so far exceeding many of those goals.  We also heard from Janel Bailey from the Los Angeles Black Workers Center about the Project Labor Agreement they won with Crenshaw Metro Line. She shared lessons learned from the PLA enforcement, the toll construction work has on black workers and their organizational shift to focus on public sector jobs in their 1,000 strong campaign. 

For a session recording click here

For session slides click here

For additional resources click here

11/16/23 - Building Equitable Hiring into Infrastructure Projects

Rebuilding our communities means delivering good jobs to those most in need. New federal funding flowing into our communities should meet this goal. In this session, we reviewed efforts at the federal, state and local level to strengthen equitable hiring linked to infrastructure funding. We reviewed existing equity standards covered by Executive Order 11246 and new opportunities in the recent legislation to win local hire agreements in federally funded road, highway, and transit construction projects. We heard from the organizations who’ve been working to strengthen the standards and organizers who’ve been working to make the standards real on the ground.  Session panelists included Allie Perez, Texas Women in Trades; Valerie Lizarraga, Jobs to Move America; Nate Howell, Local Progress and Meg Vasey, Tradeswomen Taskforce
 

For a session recording click here 

For session slides click here

For additional resources click here

10/25/23 - Infrastructure, Labor Standards & Opportunities for Co-Enforcement and Community Compliance Monitoring

Over $2 Trillion in Federal funding to rebuild our nation’s Infrastructure, transition to a green economy and strengthen domestic manufacturing is flowing into our states and cities over the next 10 years. This new funding is coming from the American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, and the Biden administration’s general industrial policy. This funding provides our biggest opportunity in decades to shape labor standards in the millions of jobs that will be created. 

In this, the first in our new GEL series, we provide an overview of funding streams, where labor standards exist or can be won, and how community enforcement will be key to securing gains. Panelists included: Janice Fine, Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers University; Miranda Nelson, Jobs to Move America and Aquilina Soriano Versoza, Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California. 

For session recording click here
For session slides click here
For session notes, including additional resources on these bills and how to track the funding, click here

9/13/23 - SEIU’s Fast Food Council Campaign Strategy to Win Fair Wages, Safe Working Conditions and Reach Scale

We heard from Maria Maldonado and Adam Weisberg from SEIU’s California Fast Food Organizing Campaign just as they were on the verge of winning a major victory to ensure the FAST Act goes into effect next year – with a $20/hour wage for fast food employees and the creation of the Fast Food Council.  For more details on the final bill that advanced in the California legislature on Thursday, see this article.  They shared how they are incorporating creative organizing and enforcement strategies into their campaign to set up a Fast Food Standards Board in California.

For session slides click here

For session notes click here

6/14/23 - Lessons from Seattle: How Labor Standards Boards do (and don’t always) aid Organizing

Danielle Alvarado,  Executive Director from Fair Work Center & Working Washington shared how Seattle’s Domestic Workers Labor Standards board has been a strategic tool in Fair Work Center’s overall power-building strategy – but not an end in itself. She shared lessons learned on how to leverage the board to create resources for organizing and reflected on the unexpected challenges and breakthroughs the board has created. Adam Kader from ARISE Chicago, Isaiah Toney from East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (E-Base), Camila Trujillo from Worker’s Defense and Ruth Schultz from Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL) shared updates on their labor standards campaigns and poised questions for Danielle.

For session recording click here

4/12/23 - Setting Standards Is Not Enough: Labor Standards Boards Must Facilitate Worker Organizing and Robust Enforcement

Brian Elliott, Executive Director of the SEIU Minnesota State Council provided an overview of their proposed Labor Standards Board legislation in Minneapolis and Minnesota and discussed guidelines for organizers considering launching a worker standards board campaign. A paper co-written by Brian and Janice Fine lays out key provisions to include in legislation to build worker power and set up for successful strategic enforcement plans.

This paper is available in English and Spanish. 

11/17/22 - The NY Healthy Nail Salon Coalition

The NY Healthy Nail Salon Coalition was founded in 2014 by Adhikaar and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). The coalition won the nation's first Nail Salon Workers' Bill of Rights in 2015, and successfully advocated to eliminated the tipped subminimum wage for nail salon workers in 2019. In this deep dive, we will dig into the current campaign to create a Nail Salon Standards Council in New York State, with a focus on how the campaign and the Council can used to build worker power and shift the dynamics of the industry.

9/15/22  - Co-enforcement and Sectoral Bargaining

For this session we take a step back and look at the current moment in the labor movement, and discuss how co-enforcement and sectoral bargaining fit into the moment we are in. In particular, we look at the upswell in worker organizing and its limitations, and we examine whether and how local enforcement and policy structures can be used to build long-standing worker power.

6/8/22 – National Labor Relations Board

How organizers can use protected concerted activities rights under the NLRA to support workers outside of a traditional union organizing context, with a deep dive on protecting immigrant workers.  This session features presentations from:

  • Teresa Poor, Assistant Regional Director, Region 29 (Brooklyn), National Labor Relations Board
  • Mori Rubin, Regional Director, Region 31 (Los Angeles), National Labor Relations Board
  • Rayos Burciaga, Community Organizer, Somos
  • Jessie Hahn, Senior Labor and Employment Policy Attorney, National Immigration Legal Center (NILC)

thumbnail image of GEL 6-8-22 recording


View the recording 
Please note that this webinar contains a mix of English and Spanish.

​5/4/22 – Co-enforcement Partnership

Co-enforcement partnership between the Chinese Progressive Association and the other members of the Workers’ Rights Community Collaborative and the City of San Francisco's Office of Labor Standards Enforcement.

3/2/22 – Co-enforcement in the Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul

Co-enforcement in the Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL)

2/2/22 – Co-enforcement Partnerships

Co-enforcement partnerships between Arise Chicago and the City of Chicago and KIWA (Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance) and the City and County of Los Angeles

12/8/21 – LA Public Health Council

Deep dive on LA Public Health Councils model