American Workers’ Experiences with Power, Information, and Rights on the Job: A Roadmap for Reform
April 30, 2020
By Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
American labor and employment law is broken—affording workers little voice and few rights—and the COVID-19 pandemic has cast these failings in sharp relief. But even before the coronavirus crisis, a growing number of labor activists, policymakers, and academics have been calling for a fundamental overhaul of workplace law.
In American Workers’ Experiences with Power, Information, and Rights on the Job: A Roadmap for Reform, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez proposes a framework for assessing the impact of workplace law reform on a specific subset of outcomes: those related to workers’ rights, information, and power on the job. These criteria speak to worker power under normal social and economic conditions, but they take on renewed importance as the country grapples with an unprecedented public health crisis and its economic aftermath.
As policymakers consider urgent labor law reforms, what standards should they use to define “good jobs?” Learn more in Power, Information, and Rights in the American Workplace: Surveying the Scene.