Workshops
Now Comes the Hard Part: Implementing and Enforcing Living Wage Ordinances
As Stephanie Luce demonstrated in her 2004 book, Fighting for a Living Wage, getting a Living Wage Ordinance passed is just the beginning. Due to forces such as ideological opposition, bureaucratic inertia, and the influence of business interests, many cities have done little to effectively implement, monitor, and enforce their ordinances.
Buffalo represents an extreme example, where citizen groups had to sue the City to have the unanimously-passed ordinance enforced. Implementation raises a host of practical questions for living wage advocates, but it also raises more general questions about how local democracies function and how citizens can be engaged in all parts of a law's life history, and not just in getting it passed.
Moderator: Sara Faherty, University at Buffalo Law School
Stephanie Luce, University of Massachusetts
Bruce Nissen,Florida International University
Antoine Thompson, New York State Senate
Allison Duwe, Coalition for Economic Justice
