Chris Mansfield/Philadelphia City Council
The POWER Act is critical for Philadelphia, where decades of segregation and redlining have contributed to high rates of poverty and inequality.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker recently signed the Protect Our Workers, Enforce Rights (POWER) Act into law, strengthening protections against wage theft and employer retaliation for nearly 750,000 workers across the city. The bill’s passage is even more remarkable coming as it does on the heels of historic hostility to workers’ rights.
The POWER Act addresses long-standing issues surrounding the enforcement of existing worker protections like the 2020 Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which codified safeguards for caregivers. The new law, passed by the Philadelphia City Council in May, shifts the burden of proof when there are allegations of crimes such as wage theft from employees to employers and increases penalties for those violations.
Previously, workers who won a judgment against an employer could only collect the money that was owed to them. Any additional penalties levied by the Department of Labor were directed to the city. Under the POWER Act, workers who win a judgment against an employer are now entitled to the money they’re owed plus damages (up to $2,000 for each violation), which compensates workers who have suffered economically, physically, and emotionally.
The law also authorized the creation of a Worker Justice Fund, which collects fines from employers and gives the money collected to victims of retaliation. It also establishes a “bad actors” database: Employers who fail to comply with a judgment or have multiple labor law violations are added to a publicly available list.
A broad mix of labor groups, including the SEIU and the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, as well as alt-labor organizations (community-based groups that organize workers but aren’t traditional labor unions) like the Philly Black Worker Project (PBWP) and the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) supported the legislation. “We really see the same employers coming up again and again, and that abuse really thrives in silence,” said Nicole Kligerman, Pennsylvania director of the NDWA. “I’m hopeful that this more punitive measure against bad bosses can serve as a preventative one as well for not wanting to be listed as such.”
With the Trump administration’s assault on labor laws, including ending collective-bargaining rights for federal employees, and nominating a general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who previously worked at a union-busting law firm that has called the board unconstitutional, the POWER Act illustrates a fresh commitment to defending workers’ rights at the local level.
“A lot of folks shy away from many wage-theft claims not only because of fear of retaliation, but also a lack of resources to be able to follow through with a complaint,” said Councilmember Kendra Brooks, a member of the Working Families Party and the act’s primary sponsor. “[The POWER Act] gives folks the opportunity to know that the Department of Labor exists and that the city of Philadelphia is protecting their labor rights, especially in a time when the federal government is not.”
The POWER Act illustrates a fresh commitment to defending workers’ rights at the local level.
The POWER Act is critical for Philadelphia, where decades of segregation and redlining have contributed to high rates of poverty and inequality. It’s especially significant for domestic workers who were historically excluded from landmark New Deal legislation like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act. These workers, primarily women and people of color, continue to have significantly lower union membership rates than other groups and have thus been especially vulnerable to abuses.
“As Philadelphia became less of a hub for manufacturing, we saw a lot of those same workers then move into retail, food service, and hospitality,” Brittany Alston, executive director of the PBWP, told the Prospect. “While there are fighting unions in the city that are raising the standard of work for those industries, that is not a majority unionized set of sectors, meaning there’s a lot more room for exploitation and extraction of Black labor in the city of Philadelphia.”
Today, Philadelphia’s poverty rate, nearly 23 percent, is the highest of the ten most populous cities in the country. Nearly 1 in 10 Philadelphians live in deep poverty, meaning their income is at or below 50 percent of the federal poverty line ($15,650 in 2025).
These disparities are largely distributed along the fault lines of race and jobs. Much of the city’s low-wage workforce is concentrated in industries like hospitality and food services (which are disproportionately made up of Black and Hispanic workers), which have some of the highest rates of wage theft and labor violations.
The act was a major accomplishment for the Pennsylvania Working Families Party (WFP), which has secured two of the seven at-large seats on Philadelphia’s city council. It’s a significant milestone: A council rule gives the political party with the most registered voters five at-large seats. For decades, the Democratic Party has held the majority of those seats. With two seats, the WFP is now the second-largest party. The Republican Party only holds one seat.
At a May hearing on the bill, some opponents of the bill sought to refute claims of employer abuses with individual success stories and argued that the bill’s passage would undermine the city’s competitiveness. “I believe our industry is an opportunity for people,” said Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association. “There is an African American woman who is one of my board members. She started out at her hotel as a housekeeper, and she is now the general manager of a hotel making north of $200,000.”
Alston called Grose’s testimony an “incomplete picture and flawed image of a bootstraps mentality” that missed the POWER Act’s broader purpose of securing protections for workers at large. “What was clear to me in that moment,” she said, “was that folks who were behind the trade industry lobby associations were really stuck on these isolated stories of success, as compared to the more wide and comprehensive picture that needs to be told about the ways that people are being exploited on their jobs because of immigration, because of gender, because of being formerly incarcerated or incarceration status,” said Alston.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that over $1.5 billion in stolen wages was recovered for employees between 2021 and 2023, but a large percentage of stolen earnings continues to go unrecovered. The POWER Act and similar initiatives, like the Workplace Justice Fund in San Diego, however, mark significant steps localities have taken to recover them—and demonstrate what happens when people most affected by a given law are the ones doing the lawmaking.
“When we enter legislation, we’re able to go through and think about the process as the impacted person. And I think for me, that has been my driving force,” said Brooks, a former domestic worker and nursing assistant. “We have solid, real-life experience with folks who haven’t experienced this on the other end.”
