Beyond new governance: Improving employment standards enforcement in liberal market economies

The growth of precarious employment has drawn attention to a mounting crisis in employment standards enforcement, as mechanisms within traditional employment law are increasingly ineffective at ensuring protection for workers in precarious jobs. This growing enforcement crisis has coincided with the adoption of new regulatory strategies that show an increasing influence of regulatory new governance. Using reforms in four jurisdictions as illustrative examples, and set in the context of the employment standards enforcement crisis, this chapter raises serious concerns around the emergence of new modes of regulatory governance. The authors argue that new modes of regulation that fail to account adequately for the power dynamics of the employment relationship risk entrenching processes of regulatory degradation. In light of this failure, the chapter outlines four principles for more effective employment standards regulation that aim to balance aspects of traditional regulatory models with a selective application of more promising elements of regulatory new governance with the primary aim of ensuring regulatory protection for workers in precarious jobs.