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
Free the Economy podcast: Questioning the AI jobs doomsday with Sean Higgins
In this week’s episode we cover making home appliances great again, fighting price controls on health care, research on AI-fueled…
Blog
Why Big Tech is postponing the AI jobs doomsday
The heads of big tech have recently changed their tune regarding artificial intelligence’s effect on jobs. The emerging technology will bolster the workforce,…
Study
Don’t Panic: A Skeptic’s Guide to the AI Jobs Doomsday
As technology advances it has periodically bred the fear that progress will destroy jobs and livelihoods. History teaches that these fears are usually misplaced.
Search Posts
Blog
Unions Gain Obamacare Exemptions after Complaining about Lack of Privileges
The Obama administration is exempting many labor unions from provisions of the new health care law after all.
Blog
How State Governments Can Stay in the Black
A study by the University of California, Berkeley’s Sarah F. Anzia and Stanford University’s Terry M. Moe finds that public sector unions greatly increase costs…
Blog
CEI Labor and Employment Scorecard: Insourcing Amendment to Intelligence Authorization Act
This week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will score a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in its consideration of the Intelligence Authorization Act…
Blog
CEI Labor and Employment Scorecard: Insourcing Amendment to Intelligence Authorization Act
This week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will score a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in its consideration of the Intelligence Authorization Act…
Blog
21 Chicago Aldermen Introduce $15 Minimum Wage Bill
Proponents of a government-imposed wage hike in Chicago are gaining steam. On May 28, 21 of the city's 50 council members signed on as co-sponsors…
Blog
Chattanooga Mayor Berke Delivers City Employees to SEIU
In today's Chattanooga Times Free Press, Matt Patterson, executive director at the Center for Worker Freedom, draws attention to the behind the scenes deal between…
Blog
NLRB Rules That Employees Have the Right to Be Disrespectful to Fellow Employees
The NLRB has ruled, once again, that a company’s employee handbook cannot require its employees to be courteous to fellow employees.
Blog
How Policy Makers Should Approach Google’s Driverless Shuttles
Yesterday, Chris Urmson, director of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, wrote a post for the company blog describing Google’s newest prototype: fully automated vehicles that…
Blog
Phoenix Ends Pension Spiking
Most state constitutions contain a little-used provision known as the "gift clause," which prohibit certain public expenditures to private entities. Unfortunately, only the Goldwater Institute,…
Blog
Do Home Care Workers Really Rely on Unions?
Ai-Jen Poo has made the case that home care workers benefit from union representation:…
Blog
CEI Labor Scorecard: National Defense Authorization Act
This week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government, will score a vote…
Mass Live
Boston taxi drivers’ union to protest ride sharing service Uber
Services like Uber and Lyft upset cab drivers because they challenge the longtime status quo that has devolved into a cartel that limits innovation and…
Blog
IRS Employees Conducting Union Activity Costs Taxpayers $23.5 Million in FY 2013
Union "official time" is a massive taxpayer subsidy to government unions, which releases federal employees from their regular public duty, without suffering loss of pay,…
Blog
Congress Must End Department of Transportation’s Abuse of “Unfair and Deceptive Practices” Authority
The Department of Transportation is opening a rulemaking proceeding to, among other things, require airlines and ticket agents to include ancillary fees (for, e.g.,…
Blog
CEI Labor Scorecard: National Defense Authorization Act
This week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government, will score a vote…
Blog
CEI Podcast for May 20, 2014: Phones on a Plane
CEI Fellow Marc Scribner supports the FCC's attempt to lift a ban on in-flight cell phone use.
Blog
A Recipe for a Hostile Work Environment, Courtesy of the NLRB
The NLRB has forced the Fund for the Public Interest to reinstate one of its terminated union employees after the employee went to a local…
Blog
NLRB Okays Union Campaign Deception
A responsibility of the National Labor Relations Board is to protect employees' right to a free and fair choice of labor representatives. Given that, it…
Blog
Failed Obamacare Exchanges and No-Work Contracts Drive up Obamacare Costs
Politico tallies the rising costs for "four failed Obamacare exchanges," reporting: Nearly half a billion dollars in federal money has been spent developing four …
Blog
Missouri Union Protests by Placing Giant, Inflatable Rat by Funeral Home
I wish I was making that up, but Laborers Union Local 110 actually placed a huge, inflatable rat in front of the Kutis Funeral Home…
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Insurance Premiums Rising More Due to Obamacare
There are "rate hikes for all" coming due to Obamacare, predicts The Daily Caller, citing state insurance filings: Virginians will see upped health insurance premiums…
Blog
Unionization Obstructs Workplace Diversity
Executive editor at The Nation, Richard Kim, claims diversity at the liberal publication is being stifled due to its unionized workforce. Kim, in a recent…
Blog
EPW Drops Highway Bill Nothing Burger, Attempts to Bail Out Sinking Ship with Leaking Bucket
Yesterday evening, the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee’s “big four” (Democrats Barbara Boxer and Tom Carper, and Republicans David Vitter…
Blog
Maryland Unions Asks Politicians for Donations
Hollywood is currently reviving Star Wars, a classic 1970s series. Perhaps they should revive another 1970s series, The Godfather, with a fourth film centered on…
Blog
PA Unions Still Exempt from Harassment, Continue Harassing with Impunity
A couple of months ago, the FBI unsealed an indictment against a combination of 10 Philadelphia Ironworkers members and officials, which exposed a loophole in…
Blog
Gawker Article Says “Unions Should Buy a Fast Food Franchise”
But would workers really be better off if a union owned a fast-food franchise or any other kind of business? Gawker author Hamilton Nolan thinks…
Blog
CEI Podcast for May 8, 2014: The Future of Self-Driving Cars
Marc Scribner talks about his new paper, "Self-Driving Regulation."…
Blog
Air Line Pilots Association Launches Super-Xenophobic Ad against Low-Cost Foreign Airline
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is currently considering whether or not it will honor its EU-U.S. open skies treaty in the case of Norwegian Air…
Blog
UAW Teams Up with Big Brother
The UAW wants to organize a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi, and has asked the State Department to mediate its discussions with the auto maker,…
Blog
OPM Director Archuleta Promotes Public Service Recognition Week, Quiet on Federal Employees Performing Union Business
Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuelta is one of several high-level bureaucrats that are promoting Public Service Recognition Week, and will participate in a…
Blog
Washington, D.C., Imposes One Percent Obamacare Health Insurance Tax
The costs of Obamacare keep rising. The Council of the District of Columbia has imposed a one percent tax on all health insurance policies…
Blog
California Hospital Association Submits to SEIU Demands, Signs “Labor Peace Agreement”
On May 5, 2014, after months of applying public pressure on the California Hospital Association, the SEIU-UHW won its coveted "labor peace agreement," which would…
Blog
Labor/Employment Scorecard Now Includes Votes on David Weil to Head DoL’s Wage and Hour Division
In our scorecard of the United States Senate’s labor and employment votes, CEI's WorkplaceChoice.org has included voting on the movement of David Weil’s confirmation…
Blog
The NLRB Strikes Again
The NLRB has just forced nine Brooklyn condo workers to continue another year’s payment of union dues after they attempted to de-certify their union (United…
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Voxplaining Pew Charts on Highway Funding and Ignoring Transit’s Decline
Over at Vox.com, former WaPo blogger Brad Plumer wrote a post about highway funding, largely relying on the good folks over at the Pew…
Blog
Warren Buffett: “During the next decade, you will read a lot of news – bad news – about public pension plans.”
Thus warns Warren Buffett in his latest message to investors, part of Berkshire Hathaway's annual report. And when the Oracle of Omaha speaks, most of…
Blog
UAW Continues VW Unionization Campaign, Violates Neutrality Agreement
Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted against UAW representation in February. But the UAW still hasn't gotten the message.
Blog
Minnesota Law Gives Public the Cold Shoulder
Minnesota’s Government Data Practices Law allows Minnesota public agencies to charge for public information that many other states give out for free. According to section…
Blog
SEIU Deploys Top-Down Organizing Tactics against California Hospitals
Labor unions no longer gain worker support prior to kicking off organizing campaigns. Now they find it much easier to apply public pressure and intimidate…
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Finally Free to Leave SEIU, Michigan Home Care Workers Do Exactly That
Michigan becoming the nation's 24th right to work state in 2012 appeared to pose a challenge to major industrial private sector unions like United Auto…
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Congressional Scorecard Update: Minimum Wage Fairness Act of 2014
Today, the Minimum Wage Fairness Act of 2014, a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, failed to gain enough support…
Blog
Sketchy Super PACs
The labor battle in Missouri is becoming supersized because of union super PACs. Unions can support politicians (just Democrats, of course) and policies through super…
Blog
This Minimum Wage Hike Will Kill Jobs
The key thing you need to know about a minimum wage hike is that it will kill jobs. About 80 percent of economists surveyed…
Blog
Congressional Scorecard Update: Confirmation of David Weil to Wage and Hour Division
On April 28, 2014, the U.S. Senate confirmed another ardent Big Labor supporter, David Weil, to serve as the administrator of the Wage and Hour…
Blog
Google’s Self-Driving Cars Approach 700,000 Miles of Crash-Free Driving
In a report released last week for CEI, I noted that developers need to be able to demonstrate automated vehicle safety benefits in order…
Blog
Education or Indoctrination?
Bills are being introduced in Connecticut and Illinois that would require school curriculum to teach the history of the labor movement.
Blog
A Victory for Taxpayers and Equal Protection: Supreme Court Upholds Michigan’s Proposal 2
Taxpayers of all races pay more when government contracts are doled out based on race, rather than awarded to the lowest bidder. That's one reason…
Blog
California Labor Board Obstructing Farm Workers Union Decertification Bid
Outdated labor law has led to the problem of inherited unions. Research done by the Center for Union Facts has found that less than 10…
Blog
Driverless Cars, Innovation, and Regulation: Let’s Not Mess it Up
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman about to take a spin in Google’s self-driving car. (Photo by Marc Scribner) For the past several years, I’ve been…
Blog
UAW Drops Volkswagen Union Election Appeal
Remember when the United Auto Workers lost in a unionization vote at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and filed an appeal to overturn the…
Staff & Scholars
Sean Higgins
Research Fellow
- Deregulation
- Labor and Employment
Ryan Young
Senior Economist and Director of Publications
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform
Ivan Osorio
Editorial Director
- Labor and Employment
Iain Murray
Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow
- Banking and Finance
- Trade and International