Co-Governance and the Next 250 Years of American Democracy

One of the examples where this bottom-up approach to governing power is being developed is the co-enforcement of workers’ rights. In cities like Minneapolis and San Francisco, to name a few, low-wage workers are organizing and collaborating with local government bodies to enforce vital workplace protections. These examples are critical as we think about the future of our government because they center the rights, needs, and perspectives of the very people who have historically been written out of the founding vision of ​“we the people.” 

Low-wage workers are disproportionately women, Black and Brown people, and immigrants. These demographics aren’t an accident. Instead, they are the cumulative result of policy choices that have excluded jobs historically held by Black workers from critical organizing protections or minimum wage laws. While the racial makeup of the workforce has shifted over time, the dynamics of exploitation and exclusion have remained. Low-wage workers are more likely to have their rights violated at work—so much more likely that the U.S. Department of Labor maintains a table of ​“Low Wage - High Violation Industries,” documenting stolen wages and penalties. And those numbers are absolutely an undercount, as the same power dynamics that make workers subject to abuse mean that those abuses often go unreported. 

But across the country, low-wage workers are organizing and using co-governance strategies to enforce their rights and build power. In San Francisco, the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) and their allies are building a co-enforcement model that has gained national attention for its success at recouping stolen wages and preventing future abuses. The CPA is a worker center that has been organizing with mostly Chinese immigrant workers for decades. As documented in our report, Co-Governing Toward Multiracial Democracy, the CPA has pioneered a co-enforcement initiative that has bolstered San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE) capacity to enforce strong minimum wage laws and address rampant wage theft from immigrant workers.

While language barriers and fear of retaliation often block low-wage workers from reporting abuses or following a case through to its conclusion, the formalized role of the CPA in labor rights enforcement in the city ensures that workers know their rights and are equipped to exercise them.

The CPA’s involvement lends labor rights enforcement several elements which are too often absent:

• Cultural and linguistic competency to engage with and support workers

• Deep expertise in the industry and access to information that would otherwise remain hidden

• Trust of workers and the organizing capacity to support workers in raising a complaint

• Additional capacity to support agency staff in investigation

Meanwhile, the OLSE’s engagement lends the power of the government to bear, including the powers to:

• Investigate and compel companies to produce records

• Require remedy, including back pay, remediation of safety violations, and other recourse 

• Punish violators, including through fines, denial of licenses, stop-work orders, or even criminal prosecution

This partnership has been scaled up to the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) where data shows that this sort of co-enforcement model is extremely effective. Instead of random inspections and broad ​“sweeps,” the DLSE focuses on collaborating with frontline organizations and key partners on the ground to target businesses that are intentionally cheating. The result: the DLSE is uncovering more violations per investigation and putting more wages back in the pockets of low-wage workers.

In the city of Minneapolis, a similar model of co-enforcement is being put into practice. There, the Labor Standards Board has developed a partnership with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) and other community organizations to collaborate on the enforcement of labor laws. Under a city ordinance, CTUL is contracted to provide Know Our Rights trainings to low-wage workers. In one year, this program reached more than 12,000 workers and provided in-depth peer-led training on worker rights for more than 400 people. As in California, the multiplier effect is impressive. From its inception in 2018 through 2023, the co-enforcement program recovered more than $3 million in unpaid wages for workers.

These trainings are a dynamic example of the adage that knowledge is power, equipping low-wage workers to be the frontline defenders of their own rights. In one case, the sister of a worker trained by CTUL was working at a facility that simply didn’t increase workers’ wages when the minimum wage went up by $3 per hour. The trained worker intervened and, following a meeting with the employer, the company started paying all workers their legally-required wages — preventing around $600,000 in wage theft. This sort of compliance doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Instead, it’s a testament to the power of creating a broad community of informed workers backed by strong grassroots organizations, which in turn have the backing of local enforcement agencies.

These co-enforcement projects have materially improved the lives of thousands of low-wage workers in both these communities, and have set an example for worker organizations in other cities across the country. Yet in both cases, local business interests have mounted strong opposition to co-governance efforts. In California, a ballot initiative sponsored by the state Chamber of Commerce and business associations for the restaurant and agricultural industries — some of the worst wage theft offenders — sought to weaken one of the most powerful tools that empowers workers to hold their employers accountable. 

And in Minneapolis, local business owners backed by national restaurant associations swayed the mayor to veto a Labor Standards Board initiative passed by the City Council. Just as we see our democracy undermined by oligarchs at the federal level, it’s clear that, to build democracy by and for the people, we need to push for corporate accountability at every level. 

Each of these co-governance projects began as a way to enforce policy wins achieved through years of organizing, and to complement the dynamic range of strategies that both CTUL and CPA continue to evolve to win rights, fundamental protections, and dignified and thriving lives for working people. This year, as federal immigration forces have stormed their cities, these worker centers have organized critical support for their communities, continuing to build even when immigrant communities are under attack. 

While ICE’s campaign of terror is unprecedented in many ways, the immigrant, Black and brown communities that low-wage workers come from are all too familiar with the power of the state being used against them. For many, to report abuses on the job is to risk retaliation, including the all-too-real risk that management may turn you in to immigration authorities for the same lack of immigration papers that they had been using to exploit you. 

These co-enforcement models developed in a few cities are being taken up and experimented with across the country. While that founding Declaration of our country was written in a small room by a few property-owning white men, this vision is being crafted in community spaces and in the streets. 

Through co-enforcement, low-wage workers are turning the tables and demanding that the state use its power to protect working people’s rights. It’s a simple ask — but a powerful one. To effectively enforce low-wage workers’ rights means sharing investigative power and rethinking bureaucratic details. It also means a fundamental reorientation towards the notion that the government exists not just to protect the property and wealth of a few, but that governance is a power to be wielded for we the people — all of us.