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
News Release
Inflation increased by 0.2 percent in November but year-over-year inflation remains above the Fed’s target
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for November showed a 0.2 percent increase in inflation across all sectors, lower than market expectations. But the…
News Release
US economy added 64,000 jobs in November but underemployment and stagflation cause concern: CEI analysis
The US Labor Department released its report today on jobs added to the economy in November 2025, a modest gain. But underemployment and the…
Blog
Court rejects New York bid to take over federal labor enforcement
An effort by the New York legislature to usurp the role of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the main federal labor law enforcement agency,…
Search Posts
Blog
CEI Podcast For January 24, 2013: Gov. McDonnell’s Transportation Plan
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell recently released a headline-grabbing plan for the state's transportation funding that would abolish the state's gasoline tax and raise other taxes…
Blog
Adam Smith’s Recommendation To End Illegal Immigration
Restrictions on immigration have created a black market in labor and movement. Currently, the U.S. government issues only 10,000 green cards to workers who lack higher…
Blog
Walker, Wisconsin Ranger (Strikes Again)
Openmarket.org It’s almost too beautiful to believe. In this era of ever-expanding government power, of rising and risible rapacity in the federal Leviathan, can…
Blog
Walker, Wisconsin Ranger (Strikes Again)
It’s almost too beautiful to believe. In this era of ever-expanding government power, of rising and risible rapacity in the federal Leviathan, can it really…
Blog
New Jersey State Senate Pushes Union Giveaway in Project Labor Agreement Bill
The extent and huge costs of the damage from Hurricane Sandy to New Jersey should make rebuilding the worst affected areas…
The Hill
Right seeks to further weaken NLRB
Last week, The Hill’s Congress blog published two opinion pieces, by Fred Wszolek of the anti-union Workforce Fairness Institute and Trey Kovaks of the libertarian…
The Hill
Coming to America? It’s Going to Cost You
Meanwhile, even unauthorized immigrants from Central America pay between $7,000 and $10,000 in smuggling fees to get across the border, according…
Blog
TSA’s Body Scanner Shuffle Continues, Agency Still Flouts The Law On Body Scanners
A great deal of news coverage today has been given to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) decision to remove backscatter X-ray strip-search machines from U.S.
Blog
Partisanship perverts the NLRB
The Hill When former SEIU Associate General Counsel Craig Becker left his post at the National Labor Relations Board in December 2011, he quickly…
The Hill
Partisanship Perverts the NLRB
When former SEIU Associate General Counsel Craig Becker left his post at the National Labor Relations Board in December 2011, he quickly segued into a…
Blog
Vive la Liberte! Even France Liberalizing Its Labor Laws
It may not be enough to make Lafayette proud, but it’s good news all the same. The New York Times reports: French labor…
Blog
Vive la Liberte! Even France Liberalizing Its Labor Laws
Openmarket.org It may not be enough to make Lafayette proud, but it’s good news all the same. The New York Times reports: French labor unions and business…
Blog
Worthwhile Pension Reform Proposal in the Old Dominion
When trying to get out of a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. When the hole is a state pension deficit,…
Blog
Obamacare Imposes New Fees, Cost Increases On The Public
Obamacare was sold to the public based on the fallacy that it would cut healthcare costs, but each month brings additional evidence that it…
Blog
How About Some Intellectual Diversity At The Labor Department?
As the cabinet turns: Hilda Solis announced this week that she will soon be stepping down from her post as secretary of labor. Solis, a…
The Hill
E-Verify: Immigration Reform’s Threat To Legal Workers
Ken Nagel thought it would be no problem to hire his daughter at his Phoenix restaurant. He had not considered that Arizona’s new employment verification…
Blog
Feds Say Hybrid Electric Vehicles Too Quiet, Noisemakers Should Be Mandated
Green paternalists often gush about the great potential for hybrid electric automobiles to reduce negative externalities, or social costs, such as local air pollution and…
Blog
Update On D.C.’s Driverless Car Legalization Legislation
In November, I noted in The Washington Post and here on Open Market that a bill introduced in the D.C. Council contained two dangerously flawed provisions and…
Blog
Chicago Voters Reelect Legally Insane Judge
In November, Chicago voters re-elected a legally insane judge charged with a crime of violence. "The Cook County Democratic Party…
Blog
The Great California Government Union Swindle
Are government employees overpaid? A six-part Bloomberg report answers that question with a resounding "Yes." It also singles out one state as the biggest spender…
Blog
Stuck in Time: Italy’s Politics
Things have a way of repeating themselves. This is especially true in Italy, where politics have been stuck in a time loop for the…
Blog
Panel Discussion: The State Of Labor
Michigan's new right-to-work law and the state of organized labor in both the private and public sectors dominated discussion Thursday at "The State of…
The American Spectator
We Cheer for Michigan
What a difference. This week’s enactment of a right to work law by Michigan lawmakers comes only three years after the 2009 government-directed bankruptcies of…
Hot Air
Forced unionization of in-home care workers back on Minnesota agenda
Open Market’s Trey Kovacs explained this at the time: To unionize a class of workers, Minnesota’s Labor Relations Act calls for a majority of workers…
Forbes
Can Union Backed Crowdfunding Rescue Hostess From Bankruptcy?
By now you’ve heard at least two opposing versions of the Tale of the Tearful Twinkies. In the first, a great American brand was driven…
Blog
Right-To-Work Laws Aren’t Perfect, But They’re Better Than The Likely Alternative
On more than one occasion, I’ve heard some libertarians object to right-to-work laws on the grounds that they undermine freedom of contract by barring employers…
Blog
Sierra Club Transportation Report Unsurprisingly Trashes (Some Bad) Road Projects, Praises Transit And Bike Waste
The Sierra Club's Beyond Oil Campaign recently released a report [PDF] highlighting what the environmentalist group claims to be the 50 best and worst…
Blog
Obama’s Dangerous Italian Labor Rhetoric
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="260"] President Obama spoke in Detroit on Monday[/caption] President Obama condemned yesterday Michigan’s forthcoming transition to a right-to-work state. He claimed,…
Blog
Big Labor’s Choice: Improve And Evolve, or Perish
Over the past year, the Midwest has had a pro-worker epiphany, a movement now reaching its crescendo with the imminent passage of right-to-work legislation in…
Blog
Big Labor’s Choice: Improve And Evolve, or Perish
Openmarket.org Over the past year, the Midwest has had a pro-worker epiphany, a movement now reaching its crescendo with the imminent passage of right-to-work…
Blog
Anti-Immigration Group FAIR: Market Is Like “A Mob Without Reason, Irrational and Immoral”
Last week, Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) denounced CEI’s position on immigration. Mehlman argued new foreign workers would degrade wages…
Blog
Catching The Chimera: Right-To-Work In Michigan
Openmarket.org Labor leaders have seen the writing on the wall for their movement for a while now. But that writing just got bolder and more ominous…
Blog
Catching The Chimera: Right-To-Work In Michigan
Labor leaders have seen the writing on the wall for their movement for a while now. But that writing just got bolder and more ominous for…
Blog
CEI Podcast For December 6, 2012: Rising Public Sector Pay
Senior Fellow Matt Patterson discusses why public sector workers make substantially more money than their private sector counterparts.
Blog
Union Holds U.S. Ports Hostage
Representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 (ILWU) agreed to a labor contract with port operators associated with the Los Angeles/Long…
News Release
CEI: Tell Americans NOW How Much Time Govt. Workers Spend On Union Duties
Washington, D.C., Dec. 6, 2012 – Federal employees spent about 3.4 million hours performing union duties while on the clock in 2011, according to an…
Blog
Victory For Small Business: Lawsuit-Spawning Disabilities Rights Treaty Blocked
"By a vote of 61 to 38 with two-thirds needed, the U.S. Senate" Tuesday "failed to ratify the far-reaching Convention on the Rights of Persons…
Blog
Anti-Immigration Group Repudiates Free Market Principles
My last blog post pointed out the anti-immigrant charge that “massive infusions of cheap foreign labor” impoverishes the country is fundamentally anti-people. After all,…
Blog
If You Can’t Beat Him, Join Together
Wisconsin’s largest teachers unions may be joining forces. The WEAC, an affiliate of the National Education Association, and the AFT-Wisconsin, affiliate of the American Federation of…
National Review
Sneaky Stuff
Some Democrats are trying to sneak through legislative amendments that would, by overturning a number of Supreme Court decisions, both codify and expand disparate-impact causes…
Blog
Official Time: Officially Outrageous
Would you be upset if you learned that your local tax dollars were funding a rival sports team in another state? Of course, but that, thankfully, is…
Blog
Official Time: Officially Outrageous
Openmarket.org Would you be upset if you learned that your local tax dollars were funding a rival sports team in another state? Of course,…
Blog
Anti-Immigrant? Or Just Anti-People?
What economists call “labor,” most of us just call “people.” Without people, there is no economy -- no producers, no consumers, no supply, and no…
Project M
Great lowered expectations
The final bill would in turn be partially funded by the $7 billion in federal tax revenues gained as a result of corporations’ reduced tax-deductible…
Blog
Looting The Future: Union Bosses Violate Spirit If Not Letter Of The Law
Openmarket.org Hostess’ union-induced shutdown captures the essence of the modern labor movement–more anti-employer than pro-worker. Workers are taking notice of unions’ negative impact on employers,…
Blog
Looting The Future: Union Bosses Violate Spirit If Not Letter Of The Law
Hostess’ union-induced shutdown captures the essence of the modern labor movement–more anti-employer than pro-worker. Workers are taking notice of unions’ negative impact on employers, for…
Blog
Immigration Reform Is Not A Zero Sum Game
Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on Republicans’ first post-election attempt at pro-immigration reform. But their bill, the STEM Jobs Act (H.R. 6429),…
News Release
STEM Jobs Act a Step Backward on Immigration Reform, Warns Free Market Group
WASHINGTON D.C., Nov. 29, 2012 – This Friday, the House of Representatives will vote on the STEM Jobs Act (H.R. 6429). The bill would…
Blog
L.A. Public Pension Problem A Microcosm Of California’s Financial Woes
Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan abandoned efforts this week to gather signatures for a ballot initiative to reform the city’s public pension plan.
Blog
Guest Workers Can Help End Illegal Immigration
The debate over immigration reform has focused on its long-term effects on America’s culture as well as its economy. But that obscures the fact that…
