Sectoral Bargaining Reforms: Proceed with Caution

Abstract

After decades of decline, strike activity grew dramatically in 2018 and 2019. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that these two years marked a thirty-five-year high for the number of workers involved in work stoppages. As worker organizing in all its forms has grown, so, too, has the popularity of policy reforms to address rising economic and political inequality and precarity through work laws. This article looks specifically at state-level efforts to implement "sectoral bargaining" reforms for the U.S. "gig economy" and argues that any such reform must be predicated on growing worker power and employment status.

Keywords: sectoral bargaining, labor law, gig economy