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
Misnamed ‘Railway Safety Act’ advances in House
The misleadingly named Railway Safety Act pushed by the Trump administration was inserted in the Build America 250 Act today and passed out of the House…
Blog
DOL gets flexible on overtime
The Department of Labor (DOL) will formally reverse a Biden-era rule that expanded the number of workers eligible for overtime on Friday. Courts had…
News Release
Economy added 115,000 jobs in April, modest boost amidst economic uncertainty: CEI analysis
The jobs report for April shows 115,000 jobs were added to the economy, a modest boost compared to previous months. While unemployment remains unchanged…
Search Posts
Citation
Judge Rules in Case Over Wis. Collective Bargaining Law
From Michael P. Tremoglie’s article in Legal Newsline: According to Vincent Verduccio, the labor policy counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington,…
Blog
A Response to Cato’s Tim Lee on “Private” Turnpikes
Cato Institute adjunct scholar Tim Lee has an article up on The Atlantic‘s website, entitled “The Mirage of Free-Market Roads.” In it, he lays out his…
Blog
Throw Dulles Rail Under the Bus
Openmarket.org Last week, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and the Fairfax Board of Supervisors granted the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors a 30-day extension…
Blog
Will Congress stop NLRB?
CEI Labor Policy Analyst Trey Kovacs and Research Associate Jack Mann Featured in The Washington Examiner Imagine an election in which one candidate may campaign…
Blog
Throw Dulles Rail Under the Bus
Last week, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and the Fairfax Board of Supervisors granted the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors a 30-day extension to review…
Blog
TSA Trifecta
First, a TSA manager at Dulles airport has been arrested for running a prostitution ring. Second, two Miami TSA employees were arrested for trashing a…
Blog
CEI Podcast for March 29, 2012: The History of American Immigration in Six Minutes
Immigration Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh talks about the reasons behind the major historical shifts, and suggests reforms that would make today's immigration system fairer and…
Citation
Will Congress Stop NLRB?
Imagine an election in which one candidate may campaign for a year while the other is only allowed to enter the race a week before…
Op-Eds
Will Congress Stop NLRB?
Imagine an election in which one candidate may campaign for a year while the other is only allowed to enter the race a week before…
Op-Eds
The Founders’ Immigration Policy
Today is the anniversary of the passage of America’s first immigration and naturalization law, the Naturalization Act of 1790. Passed in the first Congress, it…
Forbes
Ma Bell’s Long Legacy of Unsustainable Pensions Is Alive and Well
“Communism,” comedian Lenny Bruce once quipped, “is like one big phone company.” This dated joke refers to the monolithic phone company known as “Ma Bell,”…
Blog
Rhode Island Pension Reform Shows Boldness Pays
Across the nation, large and growing budget deficits have forced politicians from across the political spectrum, including some Democrats, to seek to bring public employee…
Blog
Department of Labor Companionship Rule Doesn’t Comply with Best Practices
Openmarket.org Last Wednesday, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Cass Sunstein sent a memo to executive agency heads concerning the cumulative effects of regulation…
Blog
The $400 Pizza
The reason it cost $400 was not because of restaurant business practices but because of television labor practices.
Blog
Department of Labor Companionship Rule Doesn’t Comply with Best Practices
Last Wednesday, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Cass Sunstein sent a memo to executive agency heads concerning the cumulative effects of…
News Release
Obama Admits Postponing Policy Solutions Until After Election
Washington, D.C., March 26, 2012 – Oops. President Obama was caught Monday on a live microphone asking outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for more…
Forbes
Civil Rights or Dues: The Truth Behind the UAW Protests of H.B. 56
This month, the United Auto Workers (UAW) bussed out-of-state activists into Alabama to protest what they describe as several car companies’ insufficiently strong opposition to…
Blog
Some Good News on Pensions, for a Change
Over the last four years, state governments across the nation have been trying to bring their labor costs under control, especially pensions, which are now…
Blog
National Debt Skyrockets Under Obama, Far Faster Than Under Bush
CBS News finally reports the obvious: the national debt increased more in President Obama’s first three years in office than in the entire eight years of…
Forbes
NLRB Touts Union Election Record
From Michael P. Tremoglie’s article on LegalNewsLine: Vincent Vernuccio is the Labor Policy Counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He found the NLRB’s…
Blog
AFSCME leadership fight will shape public employee union future
Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow Matthew Patterson Featured in The Washington Examiner Unions are salivating at the opportunity to take down their arch-nemesis, Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott…
Forbes
AFSCME Leadership Fight Will Shape Public Employee Union
Unions are salivating at the opportunity to take down their arch-nemesis, Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker. Last year, Walker curtailed the collective bargaining power of Wisconsin’s…
Blog
Bill Clinton’s Economic Nationalism
Over at RealClearPolicy, I recently reviewed Bill Clinton’s latest book, Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy. You can…
Blog
House Should Reject Senate Highway Bill, Move for Another SAFETEA-LU Extension
Just before 1pm today, the Senate passed its surface transportation reauthorization bill, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21, S. 1813). MAP-21…
Blog
Student Loans: America’s Next Debt Bomb
I understated things earlier when I wrote that the student loan bubble “may” explode in taxpayers’ faces, as law professor Glenn Reynolds pointed…
Forbes
Immigration Restrictions Incentivize Corruption
The allegations surrounding Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Paul Babeu and his attorney Chris DeRose are what tabloid writers dream of. It’s got it all: a…
Blog
If PBGC Cannot Go On Taking Over Pensions, It Will Stop
Herbert Stein’s law — “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop” — is being proven right once again. This time, what cannot go…
Washington Times
Raising the Tipped Minimum Wage Does More Harm Than Good
Politicians and interest groups playing the gender card to push their agendas is nothing new. But recently, it seems to be getting harder, as they…
Washington Times
Economic Rebound in Doubt as 10 Percent of All US Workers Employed Just ‘Part-Time’
From Gene J. Koprowski’s article in The Daily Caller: “The ‘recovery’ is weak and may sputter,” Hans Bader, a scholar and economics expert…
Blog
Higher Education Bubble May Explode in Taxpayers’ Faces
"61 percent of folks with a student loan are not paying," notes Andrew Gillen, Ph.D., of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Many…
Blog
Structural Factors of the Municipal Pension Crisis
Public employee pensions are sinking local governments. Over the last four years, they have even pushed some municipalities into bankruptcy -- from Vallejo, California, to Central…
Blog
Ma Bell Is Long Gone, but Her Pension Costs Remain
AT&T is asking the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents a large segment of its workforce, for benefit concessions, as it tries to rein…
Blog
Senate Should Reject Anti-Tolling Highway Bill Amendment
I previously wrote about Sen. Herb Kohl’s (D-Wisc.) terrible amendment to the Senate’s MAP-21 bill that would allow the Department of Justice and Federal…
Washington Times
Is Your Company Ready to Meet its New Disability Hiring Quota?
Has the economy got you worried about reelection? Looking for clever ways to showcase your bona fides as a promoter of “fairness,” champion of the…
Blog
European Union Pushes Discriminatory Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards
The European Union (EU) could not keep member states like Greece from cheating on EU budget rules, resulting in Greece's fiscal collapse and the current…
Blog
Pension Funds are For-Profit
Openmarket.org California’s Constitution clearly states the California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s (CalPERS) singular motive is to make profits. I point this out in “Mixing Pensions…
Blog
Pension Funds are For-Profit
California’s Constitution clearly states the California Public Employees' Retirement System's (CalPERS) singular motive is to make profits. I point this out in “Mixing Pensions with…
Blog
Trey Kovacs: Mixing pensions with politics
Labor Policy Analyst Trey Kovacs Featured in The Orange County Register Who here is better to run a business? In 2011, Apple recorded a net…
Blog
Obama Administration Seeks Quotas Based on Disability, Race, and Perhaps Sexual Orientation
The Obama administration is pushing quotas in the workplace and higher education, seeking to force businesses that have federal contracts to hire at least…
Washington Times
Liberals Need to Choose: Welfare State or Immigration
Overcoming the costs of the welfare state is the biggest challenge faced by proponents of immigration reform. The perception that immigrants use and abuse the…
Washington Times
The Autoworkers Obama Left Behind
From Michelle Malkin’s column: Thanks to a separate Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we already know that…
Washington Times
Mixing Pensions With Politics
Who here is better to run a business? In 2011, Apple recorded a net profit of $6.62 billion and its highest September earnings ever. The…
Blog
CEI Podcast for March 1, 2012: A Highway Bill Everyone Can Hate
Land-Use and Transportation Policy Analyst Marc Scribner explains why almost nobody is happy with how this year's highway bill is turning out.
Blog
UAW: Building taxpayer burdens
By Trey Kovacs and F. Vincent Vernuccio, The Washington Times President Obama and United Auto Workers(UAW) President Bob King are touting the “achievement” of the auto…
Capital Research
The Battle for New England
Full Document Available in PDF New England is generally considered among the most leftleaning regions of the country. This perception is largely…
Capital Research
Letter to the Editor: What Is the Place of Unions Today?
Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit argue that unionization should be legally recognized as a civil right. They are correct that freedom of association…
Capital Research
UAW: Building Taxpayer Burdens
President Obama and United AutPresident Obama and United Auto Workers (UAW) President Bob King are touting the “achievement” of the auto bailouts while slamming Republicans…
Blog
Think of the Children
Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers’ Union, has alleged that Rahm Emanuel privately told her that “25 percent of the students in this…
Blog
Airline Carbon Taxes: The EU vs. the World
On Tuesday and Wednesday, representatives from 23 nations gathered in Moscow to discuss their response to the European Union’s mandatory airline carbon taxes. CEI’s Fran…
Blog
Workers Deserve the Right to Remain Silent
Openmarket.org The California Legislature is considering a “Public Employee Bill of Rights” that (among other things) would restrict the state’s ability to hire outside contractors…
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