This Labor Day: Darkness in Washington, but Sunshine Across America

On Labor Day 2026, the outlook for workers can seem grim. The Trump administration is rolling back workplace protections, and corporations act as though they have a free pass to do whatever they want. But viewed through another lens, this is an optimistic moment. The federal government isn’t the only game in town. Union approval sits near a half-century high—roughly seven in ten Americans—worker organizing is climbing, and state and local governments are moving on workers’ rights with real dynamism.Labor Day is the perfect time to take stock of that forward motion—and to raise our expectations of government closer to home. We need more than honeyed words once a year about the dignity of work. States and localities possess immense power to improve workers’ lives, and we should demand that they use it. The most encouraging story of 2026 isn’t only that states passed good laws (though they did plenty of that, as we outline in a new issue brief). It’s that a growing number are building the muscle to enforce them—putting money, prosecutors, and real teeth behind labor standards just as federal enforcement collapses. Workplace laws aren’t self-executing. Recognizing this, some states are funding the work. Virginia put $10 million into its labor department and stood up a new worker protection unit in the state attorney general’s office; Illinois expanded its attorney general’s workplace rights bureau to inspect payrolls and interview workers on-site; and New York’s budget seeded grants for district attorneys to pursue wage theft and workers’ compensation fraud, modeled on similar programs in California. The sharpest edge is criminal prosecution. If an employee steals from an employer, no one questions whether criminal prosecution is appropriate. But historically, when an employer has stolen workers’ wages, even repeatedly, intentionally, and egregiously, that has been treated as a civil matter. This is changing, as a growing number of district attorneys have added labor to the docket. One day before his office convicted Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced guilty pleas in a wage theft case against the owners of famed pizzeria Grimaldi’s. And prosecutors are bringing workplace fatality cases that once went largely unpunished: In Travis County, Texas, District Attorney José Garza secured a guilty plea from a construction company over the trench-collapse death of 24-year-old Juan José Galvan Batalla, with the plea agreement requiring worker trainings and an independent safety monitor.Cities and counties are in the mix too. San Diego County created an Office of Labor Standards five years ago and has been a bulldog against wage theft; this summer it sued several national sushi companies for allegedly underpaying sushi chefs in supermarkets. And if restaurants fail to pay final state orders of unpaid wages? After trying to extract payment, the county will suspend the restaurant’s permit to operate. Well over two dozen localities now run offices dedicated to workers—the newest in Cleveland, and the original in San Francisco, marking its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. Enforcement by Denver Labor and the San Francisco City Attorney has reclassified thousands of gig workers at staffing businesses as employees with wage and other rights. Boston passed a construction and demolition ordinance requiring extensive safety measures as a precondition for getting a large-scale building permit in the first place. Far-reaching city involvement seems standard now, but in fact we should appreciate that it’s remarkable: A mere decade ago, this was not a thing that cities did.States and localities also shape the economy as purchasers and regulators. When a business wants a license, permit, tax incentive, or government contract, that’s leverage to demand legal compliance and, ideally, good working conditions. Some cities and counties block repeat wage thieves from bidding on government contracts, and many jurisdictions set prevailing- or living-wage standards for government contractors, so bad apple bidders can’t win by offering bargain-basement working conditions. Others write new standards outright: This year, Connecticut and Rhode Island joined nearly a half-dozen other states in reining in the punishing warehouse quotas that churn through workers’ bodies. Virginia joined states like Oregon and Maryland in passing a law to set simple but specific heat rules for employers as temperatures rise, rules that have been proven to keep people healthier and save lives. Washington enacted one of the nation’s strongest noncompete bans. And as more states look to understand the impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce, Connecticut became the first state to make employers disclose whether layoffs are AI-driven.On the most fundamental right—to organize and join unions—states have less leeway, because federal law constrains their powers. But there’s still tremendous untapped opportunity for action, including granting organizing rights to state and local public employees, but also going far beyond that. Illinois this year gave rideshare drivers a path to unionize, joining California (by statute in 2025) and Massachusetts (by ballot initiative in 2024). Washington and Oregon last year followed New York and New Jersey in allowing striking workers to receive unemployment benefits. Minnesota’s Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board lets workers, employers, and the labor commissioner negotiate binding standards for an entire industry—the “sectoral bargaining” that labor experts have long lauded, and that should be replicated many times over. For all this motion, a new ingredient should also be stirred in: cross-state coordination. Conservatives have long understood that states acting together, through the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, and its allies, can move markets and set national agendas. Progressives should be just as ambitious: sharing rosters of labor violators so a scofflaw barred in one state can’t win contracts in the next, coordinating multi-state cases, and even synchronizing the “drop dates” on which state labor bills are introduced.The dynamism on worker issues isn’t evenly spread. You’ll have noticed perhaps that every state mentioned above is a blue one. In red America, some leaders remain indifferent or even hostile to their own constituents. One illustrative recent example: Nebraska’s attorney general just filed a lawsuit to keep wages lower, hot on the heels of state lawmakers moving to weaken voter-approved ballot initiatives raising the minimum wage. Even so, state legislators have made some minor inroads even in more challenging terrain: Utah and New Hampshire both curbed non-competes for certain health care workers this year. And there are still more glimmers of hope: Many city and state leaders in worker-hostile states keep fighting mightily for working people. Consider recent action in deep-red Texas: Just last month, Houston’s mayor signed an executive order raising the minimum wage at the city’s airports to $20 per hour, from its prior rate of $15. And Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located, last year passed a worksite safety policy for its construction contractors, with inspections and real consequences for violations.The constellation of pro-worker state and local action isn’t just a scatter of separate dots. There’s a trendline, and a lesson. Right-wing culture and economic warriors laid considerable groundwork at the state level for their current national takeover. Downballot elections and governance have never been the cool kids for national advocates, but people with humane, economic justice values ignore state and local government at our peril. This is where the rebuilding happens—and where government can prove, tangibly, that it can make people’s lives better. Strategists are drafting national blueprints for 2028; but for workers, the real blueprint is already an iterative work in progress closer to home.So this Labor Day, the charge runs both ways: To leaders at every level, examine the full powers of your office and use them for working people—even if your office isn’t nominally about labor; even if your predecessor did nothing for workers. And to the rest of us: Expect and demand more from state and local leaders than annual Labor Day platitudes. The best way to gain and exert power—for workers, and for cities and states—has always been to use it.