Enforcement is the missing ingredient in NC labor law

Conservatives are right to question rankings that reduce “worker protections” to a single score. Such simplification often smuggles in ideology under the guise of analysis. But skepticism shouldn’t become denial, especially when the facts point in the same direction year after year.

I’m a Republican who believes markets work best when rules are clear, enforcement is consistent, and the government avoids propaganda. I also believe the dignity of work is not a slogan, it’s a condition of ordered liberty. When the worst actors face no consequences, that’s not restraint. It’s negligence. It erodes rights by letting the government decide whose voice matters, often against the individual and in favor of the powerful.

North Carolina need not mimic California or New York. We don’t need sweeping minimum wage mandates, forced unionization, restrictive regulations, or wealth taxes that are all hostile to a business climate that creates jobs. What North Carolina does need is simpler and conservative: We need for workers who report danger or assert their inherent rights to be safe to do so and for bad actors to face real penalties after receiving due process.

Start with retaliation, the most basic safeguard in any labor system. Under the Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act, workers are supposed to be protected when they report hazards, file complaints, or assert protected rights. By NCDOL’s own figures, roughly 1.27% of more than 10,000 REDA complaints filed were found to have merit. Put differently, nearly 99% were deemed to have no merit. No credible system produces results this one sided. Even accounting for weak or meritless complaints, the imbalance cannot be explained away.

Indeed, in the most recent data from FY2018 to FY2021, while North Carolina found merit in just 1.27% of retaliation complaints and settled 60%, it lagged behind neighboring states. Tennessee saw a 19.25% merit rate and settled 96.5%. South Carolina hit 11.75% and 96.25%, respectively. Even Kentucky, with lower settlements, found merit in 5.75% of cases. The only bright spot NCDOL can point to is that it, unsurprisingly, outpaces the federal government. Federal OSHA, which oversees enforcement in 22 states, averaged just 1.14% merit findings and 34.75% in settlements. That’s a low bar, and NC is barely clearing it. 

Further, for more than 33 years, no labor commissioner has brought a civil enforcement action under REDA on behalf of a worker. Not one. It is the equivalent of police departments having trespassing laws on the books but never issuing a citation, never making an arrest, and never referring a case for prosecution. At that point, the law is not a deterrent. It is a sign on the wall that everyone knows will never be enforced.

A statute that exists only in theory does not protect individual rights or promote the rule of law. Instead it tells bad actors the risk is zero and tells the public the rule of law is optional. That is not limited government or regulatory restraint. That is institutional abdication.

Fatality enforcement reflects the same structural lopsidedness. Investigations by newspapers and public radio have documented a consistent practice of penalty reductions after workers die. Fines are routinely negotiated downward. Willful findings are often reduced or removed. NCDOL has acknowledged that such reductions are common. Whether North Carolina is an outlier is beside the point. Conservatives understand that laws without meaningful consequences do not restrain misconduct. When penalties lose their bite, compliance becomes optional and the rule of law erodes.

When the cost of unsafe or unlawful conduct is low, predictable, and easily absorbed, bad actors treat violations as a routine business expense. Law abiding employers, meanwhile, are placed at a competitive disadvantage for doing the right thing. That is not pro business. It is pro impunity, and it distorts the market by rewarding those who ignore the rules while penalizing those who respect them.

Most employers comply with the law. Most workers will never need intervention from NCDOL. That reality strengthens the case for enforcement, not weakens it. Labor laws exist to address the worst violations, not to burden businesses that already act responsibly.

A system that allows for chronic violations to thrive while undermining the law abiding does not protect economic freedom or individual rights. It erodes both.

What’s truly misguided is the state’s current public posture in its priorities. Clearing elevator inspection backlogs has become a marquee achievement, reinforcing that NCDOL is best known by the photo in the elevator, not by what happens after a workplace death. No one disputes the value of safe infrastructure. But when rare, high-visibility issues dominate public messaging while retaliation and fatality enforcement go quiet, the imbalance is obvious. Elevators get press releases. Families get silence.

Many argue North Carolina can’t be all that hostile to workers if people keep moving here, especially from those states that claim to be great for workers. That misreads both who’s moving and why. Many newcomers are high-wage professionals working remotely for out-of-state employers. These transplants benefit from low taxes and living costs, while retaining protections from elsewhere and carry with them little workplace safety risk. Families move for affordability, schools, and quality of life, not enforcement metrics. They assume the law works, until it doesn’t. Then the abstraction becomes personal.

Only after examining enforcement does it make sense to debate rankings. Critics dismiss poor scores as ideological. But that makes the results harder to ignore, not easier. Half of North Carolina’s Council of State is Democratic, yet many higher-ranked states are run by Republican supermajorities. If ideology were the driver, those states would be in the crosshairs. The simpler explanation is failure to uphold the rule of law.

Limited government doesn’t mean absent government. It means doing the job the law requires, and no more. North Carolina doesn’t need new labor laws. It needs to enforce the ones already on the books.

If the state wants credibility as a national leader, the path is straightforward: enforce retaliation protections, preserve serious penalties where lives are lost, and apply the law consistently. That’s how markets stay fair, the rule of law remains legitimate, and the dignity of work is upheld, not as a slogan, but as a standard.