Whether it is exposing legislation and regulations that benefit unions, lawyers or management at the expense of workers, detailing the folly of occupational licensing laws; supporting the expansion of state right-to-work laws; or highlighting the overreach of lawmakers, bureaucrats, and courts; CEI advances reforms in this crucial, often overlooked policy area. Our op-eds, policy papers, media appearances, coalition work, and innovative research serve as crucial counterweights to the aggressive efforts by unions and their allies to frame the policy debate.
Labor and Employment Issue Areas
Featured Posts
The Daily Signal
How Many Biden Appointees ‘Burrowed in’ to the Permanent Bureaucracy?
The Daily Signal cited CEI’s expert on political career placements Sean Higgins, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, also highlighted the threat of…
News Release
April adds 177,000 jobs to economy, tariff policies yet to majorly shakeup labor market: CEI analysis
The job numbers for April show 177,000 jobs were added to the economy, with the unemployment rate staying steady at 4.2 percent. While job growth…
Blog
CEI suggests DOT put the brakes on train two-person crew rule
The Transportation Department recently asked the public for comments on how to reduce the regulatory burden. One thought that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)…
Search Posts
Blog
School Closures to Offer a Lesson in Economics
The U.S. got some good news that the employment rate had fallen to 8.4 percent in July, but it is possible that that could jump back…
Blog
Brother, Can You Spare Two Weeks?
Last year, California passed AB5, which was intended to go after rideshare companies Uber and Lyft. The law requires “gig economy” companies to classify all…
Blog
Headline: School Closures to Offer a Lesson in Economics
The U.S. got some good news that the employment rate had fallen to 8.4 percent in July, but it is possible that that could jump back…
The Detroit News
Workplace Transformation Will Affect Everyone, Even Labor Unions
The Labor Day holiday dates to the early 20th century, and envisioned as a public celebration of “the strength and esprit…
Blog
School’s Out Forever? Teachers Unions Flex Muscle on Reopening Policies
What determines whether your child school is open this fall? Apparently, the strength of the teachers local union. That was what analysts found using data…
Blog
California’s AB5 Holding Back Recovery Nationally
There was some modest good news in the Labor Department’s report today on unemployment benefits, the falling numbers indicating that people are finding work despite…
Blog
Should Parents Have to Choose between Keeping Federal Benefits or Keeping their Kids Safe from COVID-19?
Should parents have to choose between keeping federal benefits to cope with COVID-19 or keeping their children at home if the local school isn’t doing…
Blog
This Labor Day, Let’s Celebrate Individual Worker Rights
Labor Day 2020 is definitely an ironic moment: The federal government is having a holiday to celebrate working Americans at a time when record numbers…
Blog
App-less in Sacramento? Uber and Lyft Allowed to Postpone California Departure
On August 20, an appeals court in California allowed Uber and Lyft to halt their plans to flee the Golden State rather than comply with…
National Review
App Shrugged: Will Uber Go Galt in California?
The rideshare company Uber is threatening to end its operations in California entirely if the Golden State forces the company to classify all its drivers as…
Blog
Can You Have Worker Representatives without Unions? Uber Hopes So
Rideshare company Uber is trying to find a way to allow its drivers to collectively express any grievances or concerns they have without having those…
Blog
Trump Adopts one of Barack Obama’s Better Ideas: The Payroll Tax Cut
Trump’s decision to Institute a payroll tax holiday via an executive order over the weekend is a good idea even if its effectiveness as an…
Blog
Cautious Optimism on July Jobs Numbers: Prudence, Resilience Will Aid Recovery
In July, 1.8 million new jobs were created, and the unemployment rate dropped to 10.2 percent. That is a welcome follow-up to the second quarter’s…
News Release
July Jobs Numbers Show Economic Impact of Coronavirus Policy Reversals
CEI labor policy expert Sean Higgins breaks down what the jobs numbers from July are telling decision makers:…
Blog
Californians: Educate Your Children at Your Own Risk
Activist Carl DeMaio caused a stir this week by holding a press conference in which he declared that hiring tutors could be could result in…
The Wall Street Journal
Moonlighting Could Lift a Threat to Uber
Letting drivers work for competitors demonstrates that they’re contractors and not employees. If you use Uber regularly, you’ve probably climbed into a car that displays…
Comment
Comment on Employee Benefits Security Administration Proposed Rule “Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments”
The Department of Labor’s move to safeguard the retirement future of beneficiaries of pension funds governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974…
Blog
Cheers to Department of Labor for Protecting Retiree Investments
At the end of last month the Department of Labor published a new notice of proposed rulemaking on the investment choices that private pension fund…
Blog
If You Can’t Convince Them, Confuse Them: California Political Establishment Doubles Down on AB5
Progressives are fond of saying that authority never gives up power easily. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is demonstrating that by rewriting the ballot language…
Blog
Reversing Opening Comes at a Price
This is one of those things that is kind of obvious but needs to be pointed out anyway: Reversing opening your state’s economy due to…
Blog
Electronic Union Elections: A Permanent “Temporary” Solution?
Some lawmakers and their union allies want to use the COVID-19 crisis to institute a radical change to union elections allow them to be held…
Blog
Chamber of Commerce to Congress: You’re Killing the Economy with Kindness
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce begged Congress on Thursday to scale back the $600 weekly unemployment benefit bonus it has been giving to U.S. workers.
Blog
A Massbackwards Approach to Helping Rideshare Drivers
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy on Tuesday jumped on the bandwagon that California Governor Gavin Newsom started by suing rideshare companies Uber and Lyft in…
Blog
Unions Say They Shouldn’t Be Burdened with Complex Process They Created
A favorite tactic used by unions to prevent membership losses, and the accompanying loss of dues money, is making the process of opting out of…
Blog
Congress’ Long Bipartisan History of Defending Cops Accused of Wrongdoing
For more than a decade, one of the areas of broad bipartisan agreement in Congress was on protecting police officers “unfairly targeted” for their “aggressive…
Blog
Unemployment Drops to 11 Percent, Showing the Economy Can Recover If We Let It
The Labor Department’s announcement Thursday that the unemployment rate fell to 11.1 percent after the economy added 4.8 million jobs in July proves the previous…
Blog
For Small Businesses, Hiking Minimum Wages Now Is Like Throwing an Anchor to a Drowning Man
Three states and three major cities hiked up their minimum wages Wednesday, resisting calls by the business community to hold off until the COVID-19 crisis…
Blog
You’ve Been Volunteered—San Francisco’s Lawsuit against DoorDash
San Francisco has sued DoorDash for allegedly misclassifying its employees as contractors, but concedes in its own lawsuit that the “gig economy” company’s drivers work…
OC Register
Few Protections for Workers Whose Unions Rip Them Off
Maria Quezambra was ripped off for six years by the United Domestic Workers of America (UDWA) after someone at the union forged her signature on…
The Orange County Register
Few protections for workers whose unions rip them off
Maria Quezambra was ripped off for six years by the United Domestic Workers of America (UDWA) after someone at the union forged her signature on…
Blog
What Would Scalia Do? Conservative Justices Debate Each Other on Workplace Discrimination
The Supreme Court's conservative justices split three ways in yesterday’s decision to extend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover discrimination by sexual orientation. The…
Blog
We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges; Left Pushes Labor Leaders to Dump Police Unions
The progressive left’s calls to “defund the police” have extended to attacking the right of law enforcement officers to have unions. This has put organized…
Blog
Administration Rewrites Congress’ Paycheck Protection Program Loan Requirements
The Trump administration is rewriting the rules on the Paycheck Protection Program, saying that the stipulation that the program’s business loans must be used to…
Blog
White House Reaction to Job Numbers: Reopen Economy but Keep Tax Dollars Ready
The White House’s thinking appears to be that the economy is recovering just by letting people get back to work. Therefore, we should wait and…
News Release
Great News on Job Recovery
Upending expert predictions, the U.S economy added 2.5 million jobs in May and the unemployment dropped to 13.3 percent, according to the Labor Department. This,…
Blog
Unexpectedly Positive Jobs Report Is a Testament to American Ingenuity
The unexpectedly good news of Friday’s jobs report that 2.5 million jobs were added in the last month is a rather inspiring testament to American…
Blog
How Many Unions Are Still Charging Dues to Unemployed Workers?
How many unions are still charging dues to their unemployed members during the COVID-19 outbreak? While unions have been aggressively presenting themselves as the workers’…
Blog
DOL IG says “at least” $26 billion of CARES Act funds being wasted, most to fraud
At least $26 billion taxpayer dollars are going to be wasted through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) ACT, with “a large portion…
Blog
California Lawmakers Mull Tax on Jobs
California’s lawmakers are nothing if not innovative. They keep coming up with new ways to help the state’s unemployment rate, currently 15.5 percent, nearly a…
Blog
House Democrats Drop Deregulatory Push over Union Opposition
The House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday to modestly reform $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program, scrapping the much broader reform of the PPP program the…
Blog
Proposed Reform to Paycheck Protection Program Faces Republican Opposition
The Trump administration and the Republican-led Senate are opposing a pro-business effort by the House Democrats to amend the Paycheck Protection Program. The House Democrats…
Blog
AB5 Defender: Law Is “Like Taking Way the Lollipop”
It is not often that a defender of a state regulation will concede that they are, figuratively speaking, taking candy from a child, but California…
Blog
Homeschooling Growth Worries Teachers’ Unions
Teachers unions are eager to see the COVID-19 outbreak end and things return normal because the outbreak has turned the U.S. into a nation of…
Blog
AB5 Is Making Unemployment in California Go from Bad to Worse
The most recent numbers for the people on unemployment insurance are out and they are about as grim as anyone could expect, with the California…
National Review
Congress’s Paycheck Protection Program Doing More to Hurt than Help
The government’s pandemic-prompted, $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program pays businesses to not lay their workers off. Unfortunately, the program’s specific requirement that 75 percent of…
Blog
Does Uncle Sam Support Single Moms? The Question of Federal Funds for Strip Clubs
Should U.S. taxpayer dollars be loaned to strip clubs? What would have sounded like a joke just a few months ago is now a reality…
News Release
April Pandemic-Caused Unemployment Rate Underscores Urgency of Getting Rid of #Neverneeded Regulations
CEI senior fellow Ryan Young indicated that April’s 14.7 percent unemployment rate was unsurprising and will probably continue in May. He called on policymakers to…
Blog
California to Sue Rideshare Firms over Employee Classification
The state of California announced Tuesday that it planned to sue rideshare companies Uber and Lyft for refusing to classify their drivers as employees rather…
Blog
Delivery Price Caps Threaten New Restaurant Lifeline
Tomorrow, the Washington, D.C. City Council votes on a bill that seeks to impose a price cap on the commission a third-party delivery platform can…
Blog
West Virginia AFL-CIO Reacts to State Supreme Court Ruling Upholding Right to Work
Supporting the rights of individual workers has cost a pro-union West Virginia Supreme Court justice the backing of the state’s AFL-CIO. That’s because the judge…
