CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, October 6th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1 St-Thomas)

Beyond Borders: Does Firm-Level Exposure to State and Local Paid Sick Leave Mandates Lead to Policy Diffusion?

Daniel Schneider
Professor of Sociology and Malcom Wiener Professor of Social Policy
Harvard Kennedy School

In the face of precarious working conditions, states and localities across the United States have passed labor standards to raise the floor on job quality. Where innovation in the American states might have once diffused to shape federal legislation, contemporary polarization in the US makes the enactment of national labor standards unlikely. Nevertheless, the resulting patchwork of state and local standards may, paradoxically, produce another kind of national policy diffusion.
Faced with this “patchwork,” large multi-state firms may align company labor practices with the most stringent regulatory environments that they face given the geographic distribution of their establishments.
To test this possibility, we take advantage of new employer-employee linked data from The Shift Project and focus on the case of paid sick leave.

We find that state and local paid sick leave mandates spill-over through multi-state employers to provide workers in places without mandates effective access to paid sick leave, and these findings survive a placebo test using other fringe benefits. These associations are stronger at firms headquartered in places with paid leave mandates and weaker at firms with franchise models. Companies act as conduits through which the reach of local mandates that raise the floor on job quality are expanded to a broader set of workers.

Mandatory Registration. Thank You !