When unscrupulous employers fail to uphold labor standards for certain groups of workers, like undocumented immigrants, all U.S. workers suffer the consequences. By driving down labor standards to the lowest common denominator, it becomes harder to enforce laws and standards even for native-born workers.

In this report we focus on the balance between the DOL's need to protect workers' rights and ICE's mandate to enforce immigration laws. We examine how ICE's failure to fully participate in this balancing act has contributed to the creation of perverse incentives against complying with fair wage and hour laws, OSHA requirements, and labor laws that protect collective bargaining rights.

This report includes several case studies that illuminate the multiple ways ICE and the DOL could partner with each other and with other agencies to raise the floor on core labor standards.

» Press release
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New findings from Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner provide a comprehensive, independent analysis of employer behavior in union representation elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Her research identifies the range and incidence of legal and illegal coercive tactics used by employers NLRB elections and the ineffectiveness of current labor law to protect and enforce workers’ rights during the process.

Dr. Bronfenbrenner’s report also compares employer behavior in this study’s period to previous studies that she and her research teams have conducted over the last 20 years.

» Fact Sheet
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Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, employing almost half of the American workforce. Yet, labor law is not ensuring a level playing field for responsible businesses, large and small.  Businesses that comply with the law face unfair competition from companies who refuse to respect the rights of their employees to join unions. The Employee Free Choice Act will give back to small businesses the freedom to compete based on innovation and quality instead of who can afford the most expensive anti-union consultants.

Small and large businesses across the nation who have respected their employees’ choice to form a union have reported that the sky did not fall – far from it.  In fact, one report found that a higher percentage of unionized workers in a state significantly reduced the probability of small business failures.  More generally, a large body of research demonstrates that firms that become unionized are no more likely to fail than comparable firms that remain non-union. 

Increased union membership rates will help small businesses by boosting consumer spending, increasing access to training resources, and reducing healthcare costs through plans that pool many unionized workers and small businesses together.