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
Blog
Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer is not qualified to be Labor Secretary
President-elect Donald Trump is considering Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) for the position of…
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Commentary: Automation could be a problem in retail theft
Headed into the holiday season, the retail industry is wrangling with a surge in shoplifting and possible solutions to prevent theft. The upsurge may be an…
Blog
Biden overtime rule overruled
A Texas court last week threw out the Biden’s administration’s attempt to rewrite the rules for overtime. The court said that the Department of Labor…
Search Posts
Blog
Employers Good Deeds Punished by Administrative State
Progressives—Democratic elected officials, community organizers, and labor unions—incessantly disparage employers for failing to provide employees with a living wage, adequate time off, and quality health…
Blog
Sharing Economy Is Opposite of Servant Economy
In a bleak take on the sharing economy, Atlantic writer Alexis C. Madrigal says it has created a “servant economy,” where sharing economy platforms provide…
News Release
CEI Video Ad Tells Florida Taxpayers About Labor Union Subsidy
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is running an online-video ad campaign in Tallahassee to educate Florida taxpayers about legislation to end a longtime subsidy handed out…
Blog
Federal Agency Seeks to Create Direct Path for Ousting Unwanted Unions
National labor policy guarantees employees the right to form a union to promote their interests. There are clear, longstanding rules and procedures that provide a…
Comment
CEI Comments on Proposed Rule Decertification of Representatives
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, I respectfully submit these comments in response to the National Mediation Board’s (NMB) Proposed Rule on the Decertification of…
Blog
Union Subsidy Faces Judicial Scrutiny
“When you’re hired as a teacher, you should be teaching,” said Judge Jose L. Fuentes of the New Jersey Court of Appeals. This statement is…
Blog
Why National Right to Work Act Is Necessary
No worker should be compelled to join or pay dues or fees to a union just to get or keep a job. The U.S. Supreme…
Blog
Democrats Invent New Joint Employer Controversy
There is a new invented controversy involving the National Labor Relations Board’s joint employer rulemaking, which seeks to clarify the definition of joint employer liability…
Blog
Labor Department Issues Proposed Update to Overtime Requirements
Last night, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) long-awaited proposed rule on overtime requirements was unveiled. The DOL intentionally wrote the rule to withstand legal challenge,…
News Release
CEI Comments on New Labor Department Rule on Overtime Pay
The Trump Labor Department put forward a new rule on overtime pay for salaried workers yesterday, that would increase the threshold for overtime eligibility from…
Blog
Federal Labor Ruling Prohibits Unions Charging Non-Members for Lobbying
It has long been the law of the land that labor unions may only collect agency fees, or forced union dues, from non-union members to…
Blog
California Supreme Court Upholds Pension Reform, Punts on ‘California Rule’
On Monday, March 4, the California Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, upheld a major provision in the state’s 2012 pension reform legislation, but punted…
Blog
Florida Bill Shines Light on Union Subsidy
Taxpayer dollars should be used to benefit the general public, not special interest groups. Yet, the state of Florida doles out a massive subsidy to…
Blog
What Do Economists Think about the Minimum Wage?
The playwright George Bernard Shaw once said that if you laid all the world’s economists end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. President…
Blog
Labor Officials Dragging Feet on Union Financial Transparency
The Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), a division within the Department of Labor (DOL), has been generally inactive during the Trump administration, an unfortunate reality…
Blog
Pension Obligation Bonds No Panacea for State Budget Liabilities
Illinois has a new governor and Chicago will soon have a new mayor—and the same old underfunded public pensions. Inheriting a predecessor’s debts is never…
Blog
Warren Buffett Warns about Unfunded Public Pension Liabilities—Again
Would you invest in a state with large unfunded pension liabilities? Warren Buffett likely wouldn’t. In a long interview with CNBC this week, the famed…
Blog
Real-World Effects of Pension Debt
Debates over public pension finance often have an abstract quality, taking place outside most people’s immediate concerns. Yet, the real-world effects can be quite tangible.
Blog
Unions Defend Job-Killing Regulation
A holdover Obama regulation is costing businesses billions of dollars and workers millions of job opportunities. A survey conducted by the International Franchise Association found…
Blog
Amazon under Pressure to Accept Union
This week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Amazon employees should unionize, and that the company should welcome losing a direct line of…
Blog
Jobs Numbers Continue Generally Positive Trend
The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the economy is continuing on a steady course, at least as far as…
The Washington Free Beacon
Critics: Trend to Raise Minimum Wage Will Cost Potentially Millions of Jobs
The Washington Free Beacon cited Fellow Ryan Young on minimum wage: Ryan Young, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free market…
Fox Business
A Reversal of this Obama-Era Job-Killing Rule is ‘Urgently’ Needed: NLRB
The National Labor Relations Board is on the verge of restoring sanity to a hugely important yet little-known government rule that impacts the future existence…
Blog
Oregon Introduces Taxpayer-Funded Union Subsidy
Earlier this week, I took a look at legislation that has been enacted to undercut the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Janus v. AFSCME.
LifeZette
Democrats Unveil Bill to Raise Federal Minimum Wage to $15
LifeZette cited Policy Analyst Trey Kovacs on minimum wage: Minimum wage research has been fairly mixed in terms of impact The Heritage Foundation, a…
Blog
In Aftermath of ‘Janus’ Decision, Blue States Push Pro-Union Bills
Prior to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, government unions were already devising ways to keep members and dues flowing. In a…
The Washington Examiner
Even After Janus, Unions are Still Wrongly Forcing Speech on Public Employees
Despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that forcing public workers to pay union fees as a condition of employment goes against First Amendment free…
Blog
Time to Restore Traditional Joint-Employer Standard
This week the public comment period closes in regards to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) proposed rule to modify the standard for joint employment. This…
News Release
Federal Minimum Wage Hike Would Cost Jobs, Opportunity, CEI Experts Warn
House Democrats are expected to introduce legislation on Wednesday to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024 - a policy that…
Blog
Teachers Paid to Walk Off the Job?
The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union contract negotiations with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have broken down. UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl called…
Comment
CEI Comments to NLRB on Proposed Joint Employer Rulemaking
On behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), I respectfully submit the following comments in response to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) Notice of…
Investor's Business Daily
Minimum Wage Hikes in 2019 Will Hurt Minority Youth by Killing Jobs
Investors Business Daily cited Senior Fellow Angela Logomasini on minimum wage hikes for the coming year. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Angela Logomasini recently…
News Release
CEI Urges Supreme Court to Hear Lawsuit Against Exclusive Union Representation Mandate
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in an amicus brief asked the Supreme Court to hear a lawsuit arguing that exclusive labor union representation violates the…
Blog
Great Jobs Numbers Don’t Assuage Trade War Worries
Today’s jobs numbers were a surprise to everyone—312,000 jobs added in December was almost twice the consensus view of economists of 176,000. Strong wage growth…
Legal Brief
Brief of Amicus Curiae of CEI in Support of the Petitioner in Uradnik v. Inter Faculty Organization, et al.
View Full Document as PDF In Janus v. AFSCME, this Court recognized the importance of this issue in its holding…
The Washington Examiner
States Ring in New Year with Job-Killing Minimum Wage Hikes
The sound of small-business storefronts slamming closed could replace bright, ringing sounds of the holiday season as state minimum wage laws were phased in last…
Products
Free to Prosper: Labor and Employment
View the full chapter on labor and employment here Increases in productivity, not artificial increases in labor prices, are the key to economic growth…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Labor and Employment
There was a mix of good and bad news in the labor and employment policy space in 2018. A tremendous gain was made in the…
Blog
New Joint Employer Rule Means More Jobs, Not Lower Wages
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is in the process of implementing a regulation that would restore the traditional standard for when a worker is…
NewsOk
Point of View: Walking off the Job at Taxpayers’ Expense
Some teachers in Oklahoma got paid by taxpayers to walk off their jobs in April, newly released information reveals.
Fox Business
Lessons from the GM layoffs: End the tariffs and the subsidies
General Motors announced on Monday it will be laying off 14,700 workers, closing five factories, and discontinuing several car models. This has caused some soul-searching in the…
The Hill
A Solution to Stop Our Veterans from Dying While Waiting for Medical Care
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs has a simple but crucial mission. The agency’s website quotes President Lincoln’s promise to veterans to describe it:“To care…
Blog
Massachusetts Teachers Union Dues Do Not ‘Stay Local’
Labor unions like to promote the narrative that dues payments stay local. If you peruse union websites, a consistent message appears that reads something like this:…
GOP USA
‘Union Business On The Taxpayer’s Dime’: Trump Administration Cracks Down On ‘Official Time’ At VA
GOP USA cited CEI’s Policy Analyst Trey Kovacs on Virginia union policy. The Department of Veterans Affairs this week will stop paying employees in…
Blog
National Labor Relations Board Member Cleared of Ethics Conflict
Republican appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have become the target of an ongoing campaign by Democrats to silence their voices and ability…
Citation
Veterans Department Puts Medical Professionals Back to Work for Veterans Instead of Labor Unions
The U.S. Department of Veterans has long been paying certain employees to conduct labor union business on the taxpayer dime, but today the agency announced…
Blog
What Do the Midterms Mean for Labor and Employment?
The primary labor and employment statutes—National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act—have not been substantially amended for decades. A divided government is not…
Inside Sources
Displaced Workers Could Benefit From Apprenticeships, but for One Labor Regulation in the Way
By most measures, the economy is booming. Unemployment is at a 49-year low of 3.7 percent. The economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent last quarter.
Blog
AFL-CIO’s Own Workers Threaten a Strike
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka frequently lambasts companies for not “sharing the wealth” with employees. Joining a union is a surefire way to see an increase…
News Release
October Brought 250,000 New Jobs, Despite Bad Trade Restrictions
The American economy added 250,000 jobs in October, the U.S. Labor Department announced today. The unemployment rate was meanwhile unchanged from last month, at 3.7…
