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
Obama Makes False Claim About Supreme Court Decision; Fact-Checkers Parrot It
Reading a Supreme Court decision is so hard! If you are a fact-checker, it's much easier just to let President Obama, a critic of a…
Blog
Not All Jobs Are Created Equal
By Matt Patterson & Crissy Brown, American Thinker Once upon a time, there was a company called General Motors. It made cars. But the company was…
Blog
UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm To Step Down Following Turbulent Tenure
John Wilhelm, the long-time president of the union UNITE HERE, has just announced he plans to step down. Union leadership changes are not often…
Blog
China’s High-Speed Rail Disaster Is Not A Model For The U.S.
After taking office in 2009, President Obama aggressively marketed high-speed rail in the United States. (I noted at the time that most of what…
Op-Eds
Republicans Denounce Immigration Regulations Reagan Created
“I believe this action by the Obama administration is unconstitutional and circumvents Congress’ authority.” That was Mississippi Republican Governor Phil Bryant explaining last week why…
Blog
PATTERSON AND BROWN: Greece’s grim future portends Western decline
By Matt Patterson and Chrissy Brown, The Washington Times In 490 B.C., the brand-new democracy at Athens faced its first existential challenge: a vast …
Op-Eds
Greece’s grim future portends Western decline
In 490 B.C., the brand-new democracy at Athens faced its first existential challenge: a vast Persian army intent on crushing the Greek city-state for supporting…
Blog
Jobless Youth: Southern Europe’s Ticking Time Bomb
Forget austerity and bailouts. Southern Europe has an even bigger problem: a glut of unemployed young people. If this trend continues, workforces will regress in…
Blog
CEI Podcast For October 11, 2012: More Americans
Policy Analyst David Bier thinks the world could use more Americans. And an easy way make happen is through increasing legal immigration. America's superior economic…
Blog
New York Times And The Price Of Hypocrisy
Prompted by the Newspaper Guild, New York Times union employees carried out a brief walkout on Tuesday. At 3:35 pm, as many as 400 employees…
Blog
Unemployment Falls As Part-Time Work Expands
Unemployment fell from 8.1% to 7.8%, aided by an increase in part-time employment: "Some 582,000 Americans took part-time positions because of slack business conditions…
Blog
Regulations For Thee, But Not For Me
To liberals, regulations are great -- until they ensnare a liberal politician. Then, suddenly there needs to be an exception to the regulation. An example of…
Blog
New Chicago School Teacher Contract Nothing To Celebrate
Although Chicago public school teachers returned to their classrooms on Sept. 19, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) today officially ratified the contract to…
Blog
Suffocating Athena: Public Sector Unions Kill Greek Salvation — Again
On October 1, the Greek government unveiled an austerity package that aims to reduce public spending by $15 billion (11.5 billion euros) for 2013-2014,…
Blog
Obama Imposes Billions In Costs On Taxpayers In Order To Prevent Legally Required Disclosures
Yesterday, ABC News reported that "Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House . . . one with political overtones – and announced…
Op-Eds
With the Economy Sputtering, Obama Must Allow High-Skilled Immigrants
In the heated immigration debate, a bright spot has emerged—the bipartisan consensus that high-skilled immigrants benefit the economy. Yet even as Congressional Democrats and Republicans…
Citation
Southern Californians looking for answers during first presidential debate
From an editorial that also appeared in The Pasadena Star-News and The Whittier Daily News: David Bier, a policy analyst with the libertarian Competitive…
Blog
Lose The Helmet Already
So now we’re down to safe v. healthy. The “safe” approach to riding a bike is to wear a helmet, according to the Nanny Statists…
Blog
Obama Administration Sent Guns To Drug Cartels
The Obama administration's botched Operation Fast and Furious, which provided weapons used in hundreds of crimes and killing sprees in Mexico, was broader than…
Blog
Teachers Union Fights School Choice With Discredited Study In Washington State
Right now, Washington is one of nine states that does not allow charter schools to compete with the public school system. That could change this…
Op-Eds
No Real Differences Between Presidential Candidates on Immigration
“On Immigration, Obama and Romney Agree on Virtually Nothing,” declares a recent ABC News headline. The story strings together quotes from President Obama and Republican…
Blog
Big Labor’s Midwest Offensive
Yesterday in the St. Paul, Minnesota, Pioneer Press, my colleague Russ Pohl and I detail the current militant tactics used by Midwest public-sector unions that…
Blog
Unions Outgunning Opposition In Michigan
Organized labor is driving hard to enshrine collective bargaining right in Michigan State constitution. If Proposal 2 passes this November, they will have done…
Blog
TRUST Act Is An Important Stand Against Federal Immigration Policy
In a CNN column today, Jose Antonio Vargas calls California’s TRUST Act “the most important piece of legislation for immigrant communities this year.” Vargas…
Blog
Collective bargaining and government: A toxic brew
By Trey Kovacs and Russ Pohl, Pioneer Press What happens when special interests gain control of the public purse? Some recent events provide a…
Blog
Big Labor’s Midwest Offensive
Openmarket.org Yesterday in the St. Paul, Minnesota, Pioneer Press, my colleague Russ Pohl and I detail the current militant tactics used by Midwest public-sector unions…
Citation
Bill to Halt Unfair Deportations
From Jose Antonio Vargas’ article for CNN: Undocumented people and their allies — their relatives and friends, their neighbors and co-workers — have…
Blog
Saving The Game: Botched Calls And Legitimacy In The NFL
As a Seattle Seahawks fan living in Washington, D.C., I was excited for my team’s nationally televised Monday night game against the Green Bay Packers.
Op-Eds
Collective bargaining and government: A toxic brew
What happens when special interests gain control of the public purse? Some recent events provide a clue. At the start of this school year, in…
Blog
In Rejecting EPIC’s Petition On TSA’s Strip-Search Machines, Court Effectively Orders Rulemaking Timetable
This afternoon, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s (EPIC) petition for writ of mandamus, which called on the court…
Blog
Driverless Cars Legalized In California
Just after 1pm PDT, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB 1298, which explicitly legalizes the use and testing of driverless cars in the…
Blog
Work ‘til You Drop: Is This The Next European “Welfare?”
As Europe’s population ages, its widespread entitlement commitments will generate huge burdens on governments’ budgets. The economic consequences are easy to foresee: just think of…
Blog
State Pension Bailout Threat
The state pension underfunding crisis has grown so severe that it has prompted most U.S. states to cut benefits, according to calculations by The…
Daily Caller
Field of cash: If you offer, they will take
It has become a familiar ritual. Wealthy professional sports team owners ask state and local governments to subsidize their venues, threatening to skip town if…
Blog
State Capitalism Or Corporatism? Italy’s Carmaker Conundrum
Italy’s iconic car manufacturer, Fiat, announced Saturday its plans to keep its production base in Italy after months of threatening to leave for more…
Blog
Chicago strike shows unions corrupt teachers, harm students
The Washington Examiner Americans like teachers. We like to think of public school teachers as kindly, idealistic men and women nurturing rows of attentive,…
Daily Caller
Chicago strike shows unions corrupt teachers, harm students
Americans like teachers. We like to think of public school teachers as kindly, idealistic men and women nurturing rows of attentive, wide-eyed youths with the…
Blog
Teacher Unions Celebrate Another Victory For The “Greater” Good
While teacher unions are succeeding in bankrupting Chicago, the teacher unions of Wisconsin are trying to bankrupt the entire state in the name of getting…
Blog
PATTERSON AND BROWN: Unions stack the deck against job creation
By Matt Patterson and Chrissy Brown, The Washington Times If you build it, jobs will come. That’s what Marylanders are being promised in the…
Daily Caller
Unions stack the deck against job creation
If you build it, jobs will come. That’s what Marylanders are being promised in the push to build a new casino, the state’s sixth, in…
Blog
Wall Street Journal: Obama Administration Undermined Welfare Reform’s Work Requirements
"The Administration has made welfare's work requirements far weaker," explains The Wall Street Journal in a detailed editorial today: an HHS regulatory "information…
Daily Caller
America’s Founders Supported Immigration
As Americans celebrated the 225th anniversary of the Constitution’s signing this Monday, thousands of new citizens at naturalization ceremonies across the country celebrated being Americans…
Blog
Can We Please Have A Grownup Discussion About Distracted Driving?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released a new study on distracted driving [PDF]. According to the agency, 9 percent of total…
Blog
As Union Popularity Fades, A Fight For Power Threatens Michigan
The major focus on issues involving public sector unions right now is the current teachers’ strike in Chicago. Now that the strike is in…
Blog
Striking: Right Or Privilege?
As the Chicago teachers’ strike is entering its second week, Mayor Emanuel has pledged to seek an injunction with the court to force instructors back…
Blog
The Sad, Early History Of Railroad Regulation: From Subsidies To Nationalization
CEI has long made it its mission to highlight to downsides and dangers of economic regulation. One classic example is the experience with America's railroads…
Blog
Wisconsin Judge to Voters: “Drop Dead”
Openmarket.org Who needs elections when you have judges? In Wisconsin, the voters have decided to reform their state’s collective bargaining laws. They did so…
Blog
Wisconsin Judge To Voters: “Drop Dead”
Who needs elections when you have judges? In Wisconsin, the voters have decided to reform their state's collective bargaining laws. They did so by, 1)…
Blog
The Teachers’ Union Strikes Back
American Thinker A short time ago, in a city not so very far away, an insidious organization hijacked an entire school system, putting the…
Blog
Chicago Teachers Strike: A Lesson Of “Excessive Zeal And No Brains”
On September 10, 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) walked out of the city’s public schools after negotiations fell through with Chicago Mayor Rahm…
