Since it kicked off in New York City three years ago, the Fight for $15 Movement—which has concentrated the efforts of low-wage workers around a $15 minimum wage and a union—has pushed urban America to reconsider its wage laws. City after city has passed legislation that will make the life of service workers immeasurably better; they will also create a future where low-income workers will be able to eat and live without government assistance. (A recent study found that low wages and lack of benefits in the fast-food industry cost taxpayers at least $3.8 billion per year.)

Conservative lawmakers, who have railed ceaselessly against the welfare state since setting their sights on its destruction in the 1980s, should be thrilled at this development. With higher wages, fewer people will use government assistance to put food on their tables; they’ll justify the conservative drive for smaller government and fewer “entitlements.” Instead, though, conservatives have done everything in their power to stop the new legislation: They’ve introduced their own bills that would preempt any local efforts to raise the minimum wage, give employees the right to paid leave, or have a work schedule announced well in advance by their employers. These “preemption bills” effectively void or overrule any local laws that might be passed by municipal government at the behest of a city’s residents.

This fall, after overriding Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that would kill minimum wage increases in Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri state representative Jay Barnes, a Republican, gave a fairly characteristic response for those opposed to minimum wage increases. “When Kansas City and St. Louis take action that kill jobs and cause the economic engines of this state to sputter, it hurts my constituents,” Barnes told the Kansas City Star in September. “When they do dumb things in St. Louis and Kansas City, it hurts my constituents.”

This puts labor activists, the workers who have been central to the cause, and the labor-affiliated activists who have fanned out in cities across the country, in a bit of a bind. While they’ve been successful in their efforts to pass legislation at the local level, state government has been a much tougher nut to crack. Pro-business interests shower donations on state representatives across the country, in return for their votes when it comes to making sure cities remain “business friendly”—with low wages and no union representation.

In August, the Birmingham City Council passed an ordinance that raised its minimum wage to $10.10 by July 2017. Like many states, including Missouri, Arizona, and Texas, Alabama is in the middle of a huge preemption debate. This month, state legislature passed a law to block any minimum-wage increases that have been passed by any of its cities. State representative David Faulkner, the Republican from a suburb of Birmingham who proposed the bill, was endorsed by the National Federation of Independent Business, which staunchly opposes any attempts to raise the minimum wage. Faulkner’s bill to block Birmingham’s new minimum wage passed the state assembly by an overwhelming majority, while Birmingham mayor William Bell tried frantically to get the new minimum wage signed into law first. Unfortunately for Birmingham workers, Alabama governor Robert Bentley signed the bill blocking any minimum wage raises into law on Thursday, only an hour after it passed the state senate.