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
When driverless vehicles are attacked, look for the union label
Self-driving cars are coming to major cities, and one group in particular is not happy about this: unions. An effort to bring self-driving vehicles…
Blog
The AI Jobs apocalypse gets postponed, as CEI predicted
The prophesies of doom that artificial intelligence would destroy jobs have been put on hold recently. Businesses, including the ones that use AI technology,…
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…
Search Posts
Blog
Will the Jobs Bill Create Any Jobs?
Over at the American Spectator, I explain why it won't, but a deregulatory stimulus would.
Blog
VIDEO: Alex Nowrasteh on National ID and Immigration Policy
CEI’s Alex Nowrasteh discusses E-Verify proposal on Fox News’ Fair & Balanced. …
Op-Eds
The ‘Hidden Lies’ in Obama’s Health Care Plan
Even the Associated Press admits that President Obama is not telling the truth about his health care plan and how it would affect health…
Blog
Barron’s on the Dire State of Public Employee Pensions
The current issue of Barron’s highlights the crushing burden that employee pensions are putting on state and local governments around the nation. The situation…
Blog
$3,000,000,000,000 in Tax Increases in President Obama’s Budget
The president’s proposed budget raises taxes by three trillion dollars over the next ten years, notes Washington fiscal analyst…
Op-Eds
Big Labor’s Big Disappointment
Recently Vice President Joe Biden spoke to the AFL-CIO executive council in Florida. As Ricky Ricardo used to tell Lucy, Labor thinks the Vice President’s…
Newsletter
Pensions, Immigration, and Airport Kisses
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) is trying to prop up failed banks by encouraging public pension funds to invest in them. Sens. Schumer (D-NY)…
Blog
Thursday Immigration Meeting: Will Immigration Reform Be a Boon or Bust?
When Senators Graham (R-SC) and Chucky “I know nothing about business” Schumer (D-NY) come to a compromise on comprehensive immigration reform, the only…
Blog
Obama Administration Rewards Corrupt Mortgage Giants, Punishes Productive Private Banks, Fleeces Taxpayers and Responsible Credit Cardholders
The Obama administration wants to increase taxes on productive banks that are self-supporting, while exempting the mortgage giants and other companies that got massive taxpayer…
Newsletter
National ID, Eminent Domain, and the EPA
Legislators are working on an immigration reform plan that includes a biometric identification card for all American workers. The mayor of Detroit plans to employ…
Op-Eds
The Corker-Dodd-Alinsky Bill? : Center-Right Coalition Letter Warns about “Proxy-Access”
Capitol Confidential and Jim Hoft have done an excellent job laying out concerns with the potential “compromise” bill that comes out of Sen. Bob…
Blog
National ID Plan Won’t Stop Illegal Immigration But Will Kill Liberty
The Senate is working toward a ghastly compromise on immigration reform that includes a biometric national identification card for all Americans. The stated purpose…
Op-Eds
5 Reasons Why America Should Steer Clear of a National ID Card
A national ID hurts American workers while pretending to help them.
Blog
The cut-and-paste Splinternet
The way Ben Kunz in a new Business Week artcle puts it, “Each device contains its own widening universe of services and applications, many…
Blog
Obama Nominates Left-Wing Extremist Goodwin Liu to Appeals Court; Liu is Possible Supreme Court Nominee
President Obama has nominated law professor Goodwin Liu, a left-wing extremist, to the nation’s largest federal appeals court, the Ninth Circuit. …
Newsletter
Blood Donation, Green Jobs, and the EPA
Sixteen Democratic senators sign a letter urging the FDA to overturn a 1983 ban on gay man donating blood. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-GA) tries to…
Blog
Green Jobs Fantasy
I have a piece in National Review Online today outlining the fantasy behind Sen. Lindsey Graham’s latest attempt to keep cap-and-trade alive. Here’s the beginning:…
News Release
Dodd-Corker Fed Bill May Contain Left-Wing “Shareholder” Power Grab
Dodd-Corker Fed Bill May Contain Left-Wing "Shareholder" Power Grab 17 Center-Right Groups Object to "Proxy Access" Provision Empowering Unions, Other Progressives Washington, D.C., March 3,…
Newsletter
SEIU, Insurance Rates, and Gun Control
President Obama appoints Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern to the deficit commission. Congressmen grill representatives of Anthem Blue Cross during a congressional hearing…
Op-Eds
Administration Keeping Cozy with Union Bosses
President Barack Obama has appointed Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern to a new commission tasked with coming up with recommendations to…
Op-Eds
Proxy Access: The Obama-Dodd-Alinsky Shareholder Jujitsu
What would Saul Alinksy do? In the wake of defeats for the Obama administration last month both with Scott Brown’s stunning Senate…
Op-Eds
Administration Keeping Cozy with Union Bosses
President Barack Obama has appointed Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern to a new commission tasked with coming up with recommendations…
Blog
Obama Names SEIU’s Stern to Deficit Commission
President Barack Obama has appointed Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern to a new commission tasked with coming up with recommendations to…
Newsletter
Immigration, Bake Sales and Snow Removal
The Wall Street Journal reports that E-Verify, the federal database intended to track undocumented workers, actually fails 54% of the time. The New York City…
Blog
E-Verify is a Spectacular Failure and Should be Abandoned
The Wall Street Journal today reported that the E-Verify system, a Federal database designed to identify undocumented workers and prevent their employment, fails to…
Newsletter
Credit Cards, Organized Labor, and the Stimulus Anniversary
New credit card regulations go into effect this week. The Washington Post has a front-page story on the difficulty of…
Blog
Myths about Labor Myths
Sunday’s Washington Post features a supposed myth-debunking piece about organized labor that is so misleading that it’s hard to know where to begin driving…
Blog
CEI at CPAC this week!
CEI is co-sponsoring the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC, which is expecting to draw a crowd of some 9,000 -10,000 people…
Blog
Not-so-Happy Stimulus Anniversary
The Obama administration and its allies are trying their hardest to put a happy face on the first anniversary of the the gargantuan $787-billion stimulus…
Blog
One cheer for Obama on nuclear energy
Obama has done something right concerning nuclear energy; credit where credit’s due. But he also did something very wrong, which we’ll get to. The president…
Blog
Space, the final private frontier
Here’s a case for private space exploration in the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, if we can ever get rid of NASA and the FAA,…
Blog
Pundits wiping “sneer” off Toyota’s face
Noteworthy is a tsk, tsk on page A1 of today’s Washington Post, “‘Toyota Way’ was lost on road to phenomenal worldwide growth.” More noteworthy…
Blog
Will Obama Recess-Appoint Becker?
With the nomination of former SEIU associate general counsel Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) most likely dead in the Senate, the…
Blog
Driving the Bus all the Way to the Bank
Investment bankers and lawyers, move aside. If you want a truly high-powered salary, try driving a bus. Last year, the Madison, Wisconsin’s highest paid city…
Blog
The Economics of Charging for Airline Amenities
As of May 1, American Airlines will charge $8 to customers who want to use a blanket and pillow. Why don't they just include the…
Blog
Do Corporations Have Free Speech Rights? The Supreme Court’s Ruling in Citizens United v. FEC
In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court recently struck down restrictions on…
Newsletter
Cybersecurity, Global Warming and Organized Labor
Congress considers a bill to fund new cybersecurity initiatives. In the wake of ClimateGate, climate change alarmists are now having to defend the scholastic integrity…
Blog
Government Unions up, Private Sector Unions down but not out
The Wall Street Journal explains the significance of the crucial shift in union membership that reached a tipping point last week: More union members…
Newsletter
Labor Relations, Alito’s Silent Protest and a New Editor Takes Charge
President Obama nominates union attorney Craig Becker to a seat on the National Labor Relations Board. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito makes headlines for…
Blog
Why Supreme Court Justice May Have Been So Annoyed at the President’s State of the Union Address
At the president’s recent State of the Union address, he misleadingly attacked the Supreme Court for supposedly “…
Blog
The Nation Confirms Craig Becker’s Radicalism
Former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) associate general counsel Craig Becker, who has been nominated to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by President Obama,…
Blog
The High Cost of Project Labor Agreements
At Biggovernment.com, Mandy/Liberty Chick provides a comprehensive overview of project labor agreements (PLAs), which impose onerous conditions on contractors who wish to bid on government…
Blog
School Choice: Mankind’s Doom
A new study opposes school choice on the grounds that it would contribute to global warming.
Op-Eds
The Corporate Library: Servant of Special Interests
Full Document Available in PDF Labor unions, left-leaning foundations and activists declare their support…
Blog
The Money behind an Anti-Tea Party Hatchet Job
My colleague Lee Doren uncovers the money behind an online hatchet job on the tea party protests: I just came across a new website…
Blog
Lou Dobbs Believes Own B.S.
For years Lou Dobbs made a living trying to convince Americans that illegal immigrants and their supporters were waging a war on the…
Blog
“Here’s a way of paying for things that’s not going to cost you anything.”
Public employee unions, as I’ve noted previously, make up a permanent lobby for bigger government. Now they have a major victory. Oregonians who went…
Blog
SEIU and the Shareholder Resolution Weapon
At Biggovernment.com, blogger Mandy/Liberty Chick has a good, concise account of the rise of shareholder resolutions as a favorite tool of organized labor. By…
Blog
SEIU Suffers a Major Loss in California
The powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has taken a major hit from a rival union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which is…
Newsletter
Murkowski vs. EPA, Public Sector Unions and Ozone Rules
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) leads the opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. For the first time in…
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