Virginia Labor Secretary Jessica Looman offers strategies for protecting workers' rights

Quick Overview

Virginia Labor Secretary Jessica Looman, speaking at the Warf Memorial Election, outlined that advancing workplace rights requires advocates to focus on being good partners, employing strategic thinking, and ensuring policy advancement through electoral, legislative, and administrative advocacy, while emphasizing that enforcement alone is a symptom, not the solution, to worker protection failures.

Key Points: Looman stressed that advocates must first assess if they are good partners before expecting partnership from others, warning against 'othering government, othering employers, othering partners.' Advocacy types include electoral (prioritizing worker voice and recognizing 'personnel is policy'), legislative (understanding the 'flavor' of the legislature and assessing if 'the juice is worth the squeeze'), and administrative. Getting a bill passed is not the win; the win is implementation, which requires integrating funding considerations into legislative advocacy, as enforcement is a symptom of failure, not the solution. Enforcement is under-resourced nationally, with the US Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division having less than 600 investigators for 165 million workers, equating to $1.50 invested per worker annually in wage enforcement. Administrative advocacy involves engaging on access, education, and compliance assistance, exemplified by using FAQs instead of formal regulations to implement expanded FLSA protections for nursing employees. Looman urged advocates not to bring enforcement cases to agencies unless they are part of larger strategic goals, as government resources are too limited to address every violation individually.

Context: The event is the annual Warf Memorial Election hosted by the Harvard Trade Union program, where speakers acknowledge retiring ASME leader Alisa McBride and honor the memory of Jerry Warf, a former president of ASME known as a 'ferocious fighter of bosses and injustice.' Jessica Looman, the newly appointed Secretary of Labor for Virginia, is introduced following her tenure as administrator of the DOL's Wage and Hour Division and her 30-year membership in the Laborers International Union of North America.