This groundbreaking study rests on a simple premise: the many laws on the books to protect the working poor mean little if they are not enforced. For far too many of our fellow Americans, the latticework of legal protection may be little more than an illusion. Regardless of what the minimum wage law says, they are not paid the minimum wage.

Regardless of what the overtime laws require, they do not receive overtime. They work in unsafe conditions, are easily abused by employers, and have little recourse to their rights or law. This invisible economy is all around us. And as this report shows, it is not limited to a few sweatshops and fly-by-night firms. These practices appear to have spread to established and thriving industries.

Unregulated Work in the Global City is the product of a multi-year research project led by Dr. Annette Bernhardt, one of the nation’s leading experts on low-wage employment. It details a world of work, as the authors write, “outside the experience and imagination of many Americans.” It is a powerful piece of scholarship harnessed to moral passion. It focuses on New York City, but we are convinced that the conditions it describes exist throughout the American economy.

In this we stand in a long tradition of think tank and advocacy organizations that used expertise on behalf of – and in concert with – working people and their advocates. In the early 20th Century, at a similar time of economic dislocation, organizations such as the New York Consumers League and leaders such as Frances Perkins reacted to outrages such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire to propose laws to protect working people. Eventually they passed laws to guarantee overtime, impose a minimum wage, and enable workers to organize unions. They forged an economic compact that offered working people security in exchange for hard work.

The social contract of that era has long since broken down. It is time for us to write a new one, a social contract rooted in the simple idea that people who work the hardest and for the lowest pay deserve strong enforcement and legal protection – the same as everyone else. We now must begin the task of enacting and enforcing new, modern, effective laws to police employers and protect employees. If we take seriously our ideals of justice, of opportunity, indeed, of democracy, we can do no less.

Michael Waldman
Executive Director, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
April 2007

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Unregulated Work in the Global City: Employment and Labor Law Violations in New York City
By Annette Bernhardt, Siobhan McGrath & James DeFilippis

Annette Bernhardt, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program and co-directs its Economic Justice Project. She coordinates the Center’s policy analysis and research for national and local campaigns around living wage jobs, workers’ rights, and accountable development. Her books include Low-Wage America: How Employers are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace as well as Divergent Paths: Economic Mobility in the New American Labor Market, which was awarded Princeton University’s Lester Prize for the best new work in labor economics in 2002.

Siobhán McGrath worked as a Policy Research Associate with the Brennan Center’s Economic Justice Project from 2004 through 2006. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Manchester’s Institute of Development and Policy Management, where her dissertation focuses on the political economy of forced labor in Brazil. Siobhán holds a Master’s Degree in economics.

James DeFilippis, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is the author of the book Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global Capital, which was named the best book in urban politics in 2004 by the American Political Science Association. He is also co-editor of the forthcoming book, The Community Development Reader.

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ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on fundamental issues of democracy and justice. Our work ranges from voting rights to redistricting reform, from access to the courts to presidential power in the fight against terrorism. A singular institution - part think tank, part public interest law firm, part advocacy group - the Brennan Center combines scholarship, legislative and legal advocacy, and communications to win meaningful, measurable change in the public sector.

About the Brennan Center’s Economic Justice Project

The Brennan Center’s Economic Justice Project starts with the premise that good jobs are essential to the long-term viability of our communities and our economy. But the past three decades have taken our country in the opposite direction, with growing numbers of Americans spending their careers stuck in low-wage, dead-end jobs. In the search for solutions, policymakers increasingly recognize that education and training must be matched with policies that promote living wage jobs for working families.

We work with community-labor coalitions and legislative leaders to expand the number of good jobs in our economy, and to ensure that everyone, especially immigrants, women and people of color, has access to them. Our staff of lawyers and social scientists design new policies, conduct economic and legal research, educate the public, and provide legal defense when needed.

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