Who passes restrictive labour policy? A view from the States

Abstract

What leads states to adopt more restrictive labour policies? The conventional wisdom is that unified Republican states, with help from conservative political networks, are more likely to adopt restrictions on labour unions. We argue that party control of government matters but is constrained by voter preferences and the power of organised labour. We create new estimates of state-level public support for unions by income thirds using dynamic multilevel regression and poststratification. Using this measure, we predict the adoption of restrictive labour policies, such as right-to-work and minimum wage preemption laws. We find that Republican governments are less likely to adopt restrictive policies when unions are strong and when union support among middle- and low-income earners is high. Interestingly, these results run contrary to much of the literature on the unequal representation of the wealthy in public policy.

State preemption and affordable housing policy

“… 6 We also analyse the number of preemptions or the intensity of preemption (Bucci and Jansa, 2021) per year. No variables are statistically significant in this analysis.…”

Civic Engagement in Decline: Deunionization and a Fifty State Solution?

“…Much of this information is difficult to challenge as groups have an advantage in communicating workplace information. Currently, I find that union support is high in each state, especially so among the bottom 66 percent of the income scale (Bucci & Jansa, n.d.). From the 1990s forward, support in each state is generally above the 0.5 “neutral” position.…”