Rust Belt cities like Cleveland face a much more hostile landscape for passing pro-worker policies than major cities like New York. But a range of policy options is available to legislators who want to take advantage of them.
While Zohran Mamdani was trouncing his opponents in the New York City mayoral election, Tanmay Shah, a twenty-nine-year-old Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and South Asian immigrant, who ran on a platform of affordable housing, affordable groceries, and reliable city services, won the Ward 12 City Council seat in Cleveland, Ohio.
It took three weeks of counting provisional and mail-in ballots to certify the victory, but as of November 25, 2025, it was official: Shah had unseated the establishment-backed incumbent by just nine votes. It was a squeaker, but a victory nonetheless — and one that begs a question that hasn’t been examined as much as the implications of Mamdani’s victory: What should municipal socialism look like in the Rust Belt?
In a recent piece on how Mamdani can help rebuild the labor movement in New York City, Eric Blanc proposed a broad set of specific policy goals and actionable communications imperatives for local governments that seek to empower working-class constituents. Because of New York City’s unique characteristics, like its size, diversity, and global importance as well as the particularities of its labor law and its legacy of union activity and influence, Mamdani has many tools at his disposal when it comes to implementing his commitments to working-class New Yorkers.
And despite the Democratic political establishment’s antipathy to his ascendence, he is operating in a deep-blue state. As such, he should be able to implement at least some of the local reforms proposed by Blanc (e.g., applying labor peace agreement terms (LPA) to all employees of establishments that receive city funding, setting reasonable wage and benefit floors for construction projects, and establishing a licensing regime to protect gig workers) without undue interference from the state house.
Meanwhile, in the Midwest, local governments face a very different set of conditions for supporting worker organizing. From 2015 to 2017, the momentum around the national Fight for $15 campaign — during which fast-food and other low-wage workers carried out a series of strikes to demand a $15 minimum wage and union recognition — prompted Republican-led statehouses around the country to pass preemption laws en masse that blocked city governments from implementing worker-friendly policies.
This onslaught of repressive legislation was not limited to the Rust Belt, but it hit the Great Lakes region hard. Many states in the South and West had dabbled in preemption years before, but until this particular wave, the old union strongholds of the Upper Midwest had, for the most part, not succumbed.
Since the mid-2010s, preemption has significantly constrained the horizon of possibility for municipal-level labor policy in these states. Democratic politicians elected to local office often reference this limitation to excuse their failure to pursue more worker-friendly legislation. In some respects, they are justified.
Several of Blanc’s proposals for Mamdani, such as passing a Fair Workweek Law to support fast-food and retail workers, are simply not on the table in Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee. South Bend, Lansing, and Madison can’t even set a prevailing wage for city contracts, let alone increase it. And Flint and Green Bay are prohibited from using project labor agreements (PLAs) to ensure that municipal construction projects meet basic conditions for safety, pay, and benefits.
However, many of Blanc’s suggestions for how city officials can support unions and foster workplace organizing — leveraging the bully pulpit of public office, tying public dollars to quality jobs through LPAs, protecting against unfair terminations and resourcing enforcement of workers’ rights — are feasible and do apply to blue cities in red or purple states. In fact, mayors and city councils in Rust Belt towns have a broad range of tools at their disposal, policy-based and otherwise, to help rebuild the labor movement in the Midwest.
A “Home Rule” State
Cleveland, Ohio, is a classic case of a true-blue union town in an increasingly conservative state. Up until a decade ago, Ohio had no labor preemption laws of any kind on the books. That changed in 2015 when residents, community groups, and union leaders in Cleveland succeeded in putting a $15 minimum wage initiative on the ballot, striking fear into the hearts of the Democratic political establishment as well as the Republican-led statehouse.
Although Ohio is ostensibly a “home rule” state, meaning that municipalities are granted authority to create local laws and manage their affairs without explicit permission or guidance from the state, the general assembly did not hesitate to pass legislation (Senate Bill 331) banning municipalities from setting a citywide minimum wage, establishing fair scheduling practices, or setting paid leave parameters. Clevelanders never got a chance to weigh in on the initiative they’d fought so hard to put to a vote.
As an archetypal Rust Belt city with a storied history of labor organizing, an economy cratered by neoliberal policies of deindustrialization and globalization, and surrounded by predominantly white rural populations ripe for right-wing populist agitation, Cleveland can serve as an instructive foil to New York when it comes to opportunities for progressive governance to intersect with and ignite worker organizing.
The city’s leadership, including recently reelected mayor Justin Bibb, do not share Mamdani’s democratic socialist vision (with the notable exception of Tanmay Shah, of course). Nevertheless, every local elected in Cleveland is a Democrat and most, if not all, claim to be dedicated to the well-being of their working-class constituents.
There are three clear opportunities for them to support Cleveland workers and labor organizing as their new term begins:
- Fully resource and expand the Fair Employment Wage Board (FEWB) to support Cleveland workers
- Tie public dollars to quality jobs by putting conditions on employers who have contracts with the City of Cleveland
- Pass policy to protect workers from unjust termination and surveillance
Resource the Fair Employment Wage Board
First formed in 2001 by the Cleveland Fair Employment Wage Law, the FEWB lay dormant for two decades until Guardians for Fair Work, a coalition of working people and over thirty labor and community organizations, pressured the mayor and city council to revive it. This demand was the natural capstone on a series of successful campaigns to pass an anti-wage theft ordinance in Cleveland along with a Fair Employment Wage amendment, which tethered the city’s living wage for contractors to inflation.
Now that the FEWB is fully seated and meeting regularly, its primary role will be to monitor adherence to these laws as well as a more recently passed pay transparency ordinance. However, the FEWB’s charter empowers it to be much more than just a watchdog: given sufficient resources, it could coordinate worker outreach and education on a citywide scale, conduct independent research, advise on policy, and more. To ensure maximum effectiveness, the city should increase the FEWB’s budget and commit to resourcing its external partners through community grants as well.
Public Education on Worker’s Rights
Research shows that many workers don’t understand their rights at work, including the right to form a union or organize with their colleagues to improve their job conditions. The section of the Cleveland City Code that created the FEWB includes a provision that the FEWB should partner with employers, unions, and community groups to inform workers about their rights and available resources. Such partnerships (which have yet to take shape due to resource constraints) would be a logical next step for the FEWB, since its investigations are in many cases initiated by employees filing charges of noncompliance against their employers; worker education is therefore critical to creating a functional enforcement mechanism.
The FEWB could begin by partnering with and resourcing community groups that are already conducting outreach to working-class and immigrant communities. For example, the Northeast Ohio Worker Center and the Young Latino Network have been cohosting monthly bilingual immigration and wage-theft clinics since early 2025 to help workers navigate documentation issues and other questions related to legal status. With additional funding, support, and coordination from the FEWB, these and similar organizations could help with co-enforcement and expand educational opportunities to broader audiences of vulnerable workers.
While the FEWB is a natural home for a worker-focused outreach and education campaign, there’s no reason why the mayor and city council shouldn’t also participate. Mayor Bibb could augment his overhaul of the 311 service by adding information on worker organizing to the online hub and/or adding a function for people to call in requests for workplace organizing assistance. Any and all local electeds — Bibb included — can and should publicly encourage Clevelanders to unionize, host know-your-rights trainings, and voice support for specific organizing campaigns.
Research and Standard-Setting
The FEWB is well-positioned to assess whether the city’s economic development activities are actually mitigating economic inequality in Cleveland rather than merely lining the pockets of corporate investors. In addition to providing basic know-your-rights education, this body could also function as an industry standards board by conducting in-depth research on key metrics across sectors, highlighting best practices, and putting pressure on employers that don’t consistently meet common expectations. With sufficient investment from the city, it could communicate these insights to the mayor’s office and the broader public, building confidence around strategies that serve Cleveland residents while guiding leaders away from those that do not.
Enforcement
While the FEWB is not empowered to impose fines or other sanctions on employers violating city law, it has already demonstrated its willingness to go after bad actors using the bully pulpit: last week, FEWB members and a contingent of supporters (many of them DSA members) recently conducted the board’s first public action against a local employer engaged in wage theft. In addition to hosting these in-person demonstrations, the FEWB can create and maintain a publicly available list of entities that have committed wage theft or payroll fraud. The city should support the FEWB in establishing a mechanism to publish and update this list of bad actors to make workers aware of employers with a history of exploiting their employees, and to pressure other employers to comply with the city’s fair employment law.
Tie Public Dollars to Quality Jobs
Given that unions are known to reduce income inequality, mitigate gender-based and racial economic disparities, and increase civic participation, it is clearly in the best interests of Cleveland’s elected officials and their constituents to support worker organizing. Yet in more than one recent instance, employers receiving taxpayer dollars — either in the form of direct payment or financial incentives from the city — have openly interfered in their workers’ efforts to form or maintain a union.
It is inexcusable that any company or nonprofit contracting with the City of Cleveland should get away with this kind of behavior, but at the moment, there is no formal mechanism elected officials can use to discipline union-busting employers. This needs to change — and fortunately, other cities have provided a blueprint Cleveland can use.
Labor Peace Agreements
Within the last several months, Bellefaire JCB, a nonprofit mental and behavioral health agency that is contracted to provide counseling services for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, has ceased to acknowledge Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1199, the local that has represented 300+ of their staff for twenty-five years, on the basis of a perceived loophole in a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling. This situation has been devastating for the workers involved, and despite its financial stake, the city has not been able to intervene on their behalf.
If elected officials are serious about protecting Cleveland workers, they should consider taking a page out of New York City’s LPAs and require that any entity contracted by the city to provide services respect its workers’ desires to form a union (or remain in one, as is the case with Bellefaire).
New York City’s existing LPA laws apply to human services and some food service development projects, but there’s no reason Cleveland City Council couldn’t pass legislation covering workers in all establishments that receive public dollars, including any nonprofit funded by city grants. As Blanc points out, the nonprofit sector is ripe for unionization, and Cleveland has already seen several hotly contested struggles between nonprofit management and workers. With LPAs in place, the city would have leverage to support these workers in getting a fair contract and ensuring uninterrupted delivery of essential services.
Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport
One workplace that should be a particular focus for Cleveland’s elected officials in the coming year is the airport, currently undergoing a massive, multiyear overhaul. The Terminal Modernization Development Program (TMDP) will be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the region. It will affect most if not all of the nine thousand workers in on-site jobs. Yet in the midst of the planning and execution of this $3 billion investment, workers and job quality conversations have been entirely absent. When asked how they plan to ensure these public dollars benefit Cleveland’s working class and not just its wealthy executives, council members shrug and point to preemption, as if to say, “What are we supposed to do?”
What these officials fail to recognize is that, since Hopkins is a municipally owned and operated airport, the city is both an employer and a market actor purchasing goods and services to run the facility. The city, therefore, has significant power to transform the quality of airport jobs, including policy tools that are reasonably positioned to withstand preemption challenges.
Further, the Labor Center at Berkeley and SEIU have conducted extensive research on how wage erosion at airports compromises safety, security, and efficiency in aviation, in addition to workers’ standard of living. The city would do well to consider these negative externalities when considering its approach to outsourcing ground-based airport jobs.
Given the scale of public investment in the Hopkins modernization project as well as the airport’s significance as a regional employer, local elected officials should prioritize measures to ensure job quality for all airport workers. These measures could include establishing family-sustaining wage standards for the four hundred workers directly employed by the Department of Port Control; implementing LPAs for all food service and other vendors operating at the facility; and/or increasing transparency around aviation lease agreements and airport/airline development deals. Pursuing policy along these lines would stabilize the Cleveland-Hopkins workforce, ultimately improving passengers’ experience as well.
Protect Workers From Unjust Termination and Surveillance
In June 2025, University Hospitals terminated two of its physicians for contacting their colleagues about forming a union. In August, three employees at Rising Star Coffee Roasters, a local chain with locations in the City of Cleveland as well as inner-ring suburbs, were fired after attempting to organize for safer working conditions, and the rest were suspended without pay.
Illegal terminations during union drives are very common, since legal proceedings with the NLRB move slowly (or not at all, if there is no quorum of Senate-confirmed members, as has been the case for the past year). Many employers knowingly take unlawful action against employees on the assumption that workers will not have the resources to sustain a protracted legal fight to hold them accountable. Sadly, in many cases, the bet pays off.
Mayor Bibb and the Cleveland City Council could move to protect employees against this type of unfair treatment by passing a law requiring just cause for termination. A local ordinance has the potential to be much more effectively and rapidly implemented than national policy (assuming sufficient resources are dedicated to enforcement) and would reassure workers that their legal organizing activities are indeed protected.
City officials could also support improved job quality through policies preventing abusive use of AI and surveillance in the workplace. Employers are increasingly deploying technology to monitor workers’ movements, moods, and activity at an incredibly granular level. Their justification is that these measures increase productivity and enhance work culture. However, not only have these tools proven to be counterproductive in terms of improving worker performance, they also increase the potential for race-, gender-, age-, or disability-based discrimination; undermine individual worker privacy; create new opportunities to exploit workers (e.g., by commodifying their data); and erode collective organizing rights, among other violations.
Unions like the Teamsters and UNITE HERE! have played an important role in fighting to protect their members from data privacy violations, but nonunion workers have limited recourse if and when their employers implement keystroke trackers, location-tracking apps, wearables and other health monitoring devices, and more. City council can help protect these workers’ right to organize as well as their individual rights to privacy by passing new laws limiting employers’ options for deploying invasive technology and using private worker data.
Cleveland Can Bounce Back
Cleveland is just one of many blue cities in red or purple states around the Great Lakes, but the challenges it faces in protecting its working-class residents are common across the region. It’s no accident that Cleveland and Detroit have been duking it out for the dubious honor of poorest city in the United States for years now. Having been utterly devastated by neoliberal economic policies under Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and their successors, both must now operate under state-level legal regimes that prevent access to some of the most powerful policy tools for economic justice.
The result: reduced civic engagement as residents must spend more and more of their time working to cover basic expenses, low voter turnout exacerbating the alarming rightward turn of the region’s political currents, and erosion of the power and influence of institutional labor, resulting in self-defeating compromises with and capitulations to the economic elite.
The fight to protect workers in Cleveland and cities like it is hard — harder than in a place like New York City. But that does not mean it is impossible, nor that the fight is not worth fighting. The local governments of blue cities in red states may be more constrained in what they can do, with fewer tools at their disposal and more hostile actors to contend with. But there are practical, tangible steps they can take to encourage unionization, penalize anti-worker employers, and rebuild a fighting labor movement to counterbalance the tide of right-wing populist agitation that has swept through the Midwest in the last decade. Workers should demand nothing less.