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Blog
Leveraging Public Funding to Strengthen Worker Protections
A successful union drive at a bus manufacturing company demonstrates how employers listen to their workers much better when their public funding is on the line.
Weeks into President Trump’s second term, everyday working people are already suffering the brunt of conservative attacks, from ICE raids and mass arrests to unlawful cuts to the federal workforce and the elimination of programs that expand and ensure equity of opportunity, bar discrimination, and reduce racial disparities. Most recently, the Trump administration has unleashed a broadside of attacks on federal workers and the agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board that protect them.
Unions are one of the most effective institutions for reducing racial and economic inequality, protecting immigrant communities, and building worker power. But American labor law is nearly a century old, and its strict limits on state and local policy changes have made it difficult to pass much-needed reforms. This has played a role in the steady decline of union membership over time, which just reached a new low.
But even while facing these daunting conditions, workers and communities can fight back and win if they choose their strategies wisely.
One powerful and underused approach is to leverage public funding to strengthen organizing protections. It’s even more important in this moment – with the Trump administration attempting to illegally freeze federal funding – to make sure every dollar spent at the state and local levels goes toward creating good jobs with a free and fair chance to join a union.
Employers are more likely to play by the rules if they know their public funding depends on how they treat their workers.
When state and local governments act as “market participants,” paying for a particular project or service (instead of acting as a “regulator” setting the rules for everyone), they can require higher labor standards from the recipients of that public funding. In other words, the government has a greater say over working conditions on a project when the government is paying for that project – and employers are more likely to play by the rules if they know their public funding depends on how they treat their workers.
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