Currently, just seven states have laws that restrict or prohibit public sector collective bargaining, said Jennifer Sherer, director of the State Worker Power Initiative at the Economic Policy Institute. The last several years have seen a number of efforts in conservative states to roll back public employees’ ability to organize or bargain.
“Over the past decade, we have seen repeated politically motivated attacks on public sector employees in states where Republicans have majorities in the legislature,” she said. “This introduces all kinds of unfairness and unevenness into our labor markets and into our economy.”
Verite News
March 14, 2024
According to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data, about 50% of the labor market’s recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024.
Scripps news
March 14, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute found that significantly fewer restrictive voting laws have been passed in the 17 highest-union-density states than in the rest of the country. (Consider that 70 percent of low-union-density states passed at least one voter suppression law between 2011 and 2019.)
Nonprofit Quarterly
March 14, 2024
Lawmakers also heard from a panel that included advocates from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, the president of One Fair Wage, and a policy expert from the Economic Policy Institute. They told lawmakers that these sub-minimum wage policies leave women, particularly women of color, at risk of sexual harassment.
Boston.com
March 14, 2024
Technology is great for union organizing. Social media, text messages, and videoconferencing allow workers to connect even when they are separated by location or shift, or when employers have prohibited them from discussing unions at work. But technology is also used for union busting. Anti-union employers monitor social media and messaging platforms to see who is talking about unions, and blast-text their employees to pressure them to reject unionization. On net, these forces probably roughly cancel out, meaning that technology will neither breathe new life into labor, nor hinder it.
Project Syndicate
March 14, 2024
Guests include: Felicia Wong, Bharat Ramamurti, Tara McGuinness, Sandeep Vaheesan, Todd Tucker, Ronnie Chatterji, Neale Mahoney, and Heidi Shierholz
Pitchfork Economics
March 14, 2024
One of the core pillars of middle-out economics is empowering workers—giving them the tools they need to claim their fair share of economic growth. It’s worth emphasizing that there is no silver bullet here: There was a sweeping transformation to neoliberal economics, and we need another sweeping transformation to set us on a path of robust, broadly shared growth. In what follows, I detail some middle-out economic policies that will help close the productivity-pay gap, and what they would mean for working people.
Democracy Journal
March 14, 2024
Amid concerns about an increase in labor violations against youth workers in Maine, Terri Gerstein, director of New York University’s Wagner Labor Initiative, says there are steps the state can take to better protect young people in the workforce.
Gerstein authored a report published late last month by the Economic Policy Institute and the Labor Initiative.
Maine Morning Star
March 14, 2024
“was keeping up with population growth, but not outpacing it, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute…[paywall]”
Atlanta Journal Constitution
March 8, 2024
“Immigrants are an integral part of our labor market, filling gaps caused by demographic changes in the United States and contributing to strong economic growth,” concludes the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “The idea that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is wrong. The reality is that the labor market is absorbing immigrants at a rapid pace, while simultaneously maintaining record-low unemployment for U.S.-born workers.”
Chicago Sun Times
March 8, 2024