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As the Trump administration moves to eliminate many rights and protections long taken for granted by most workers, a new report spotlighted how some states including Colorado are strengthening standards.

Jennifer Sherer, deputy director of state policy and research for the Economic Policy Institute and the report's co-author, pointed to a new Colorado law expanding the state’s authority to penalize employers who steal wages from their workers and to make those violations public. She said it is important for states to crack down on these sorts of abuses.

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"Partly because the federal system for enforcing wage and hour laws is very overstrained," Sherer explained. "We’re at a point right now in the U.S. where we’ve got the lowest number of wage and hour investigators at the federal level ever."

President Donald Trump has made good on campaign promises to cut red tape and remove regulations he sees as burdensome to businesses and a drag on economic growth. The report charted how the administration has worked to roll back standards setting a national floor for minimum wage, overtime pay, health and safety, nondiscrimination, child labor and other rights and protections.

Colorado lawmakers also passed a compromise bill allowing cities to raise their tipped minimum wage above the state benchmark. Sherer noted the restaurant industry, among the most powerful in the nation, wanted lawmakers to lower or remove the tipped minimum wage, a move which would affect many of the state’s lowest-paid workers.

The restaurant industry has been a powerful lobby in the Colorado State House and they worked really hard this year to try to convince legislators to weaken the state law.

Sherer believes Governor Jared Polis was out of step with voters when he vetoed a bill which would have removed major barriers for workers to form a union. As economic inequality continues to grow, alongside record corporate profits, she noted public approval of labor unions has reached 70 percent, an historic high.

"It’s no surprise that workers are looking for vehicles to help level the playing field," Sherer pointed out. "Sixty million workers say that they would vote to join a union if they had the chance, and that 'if they had the chance' is really the hitch."