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The Gloves-Off Economy

Date: April 29, 2009

Time: 12:00 PM

220 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor
New York NY 10001

Across the United States, increasing numbers of employers are breaking, bending, or evading long-established laws and standards designed to protect workers, from the minimum wage to job safety to the right to organize. This "gloves-off economy" is sending shock waves into every corner of the low-wage labor market. In the process, employers who play by the rules are under growing pressure to follow suit, intensifying the search for low-cost business strategies across a wide range of industries and ratcheting up into ever higher reaches of the labor market.

Demos and The National Employment Law Project are proud to co-sponsor a forum with Annette Bernhardt, co-editor of The Gloves-Off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America's Labor Market, and contributors Nik Theodore and David Weil. This book brings together economists, sociologists, labor attorneys, union strategists, and other experts to examine a range of gloves-off practices, the workers who are affected by them, and strategies for enforcing workplace standards. The authors offer varying perspectives on both the problem and the creative solutions currently being explored in a wide range of communities and industries. The Gloves-off Economy is a stirring call to renew worker protections in the twenty-first century.

About the Speakers:

Annette Bernhardt co-directed the Economic Justice Project at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, which merged with the National Employment Law Project in 2008. She coordinates NELP's policy analysis and research support for campaigns around living wage jobs, immigrant worker rights and accountable development. A leading scholar of low-wage work, she has helped develop and analyze innovative policy responses to the changing nature of work in the United States. She has published widely in academic journals, and received Princeton University's Richard A. Lester Prize for the Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations, as well as Cornell University's Center for the Study of Inequality Distinguished Book Award, among others.

 

 

Nik Theodore is Director of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Center for Urban Economic Development (UICUED), and Assistant Professor in the Urban Planning and Policy Program at UIC. His work examines changing workforce development systems, local labor markets, and new labor market intermediaries. Dr. Theodore's research has been published in a variety of planning, policy, and economics journals including Cambridge Journal of Economics, Public Investment, Policy & Politics, Economic Development Quarterly, and Urban Geography.

David Weil is Professor of Economics and Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Boston University School of Management. He is also Co-Director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research spans regulatory and labor market policy, industrial and labor relations, occupational safety and health, and transparency policy.  He has written three books, including the recently released Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency. In addition, he is the author of over 75 scholarly and popular articles and publications. Professor Weil has worked as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and a number of other government agencies, as well as serving as mediator and advisor in a range of labor union and labor/management settings across the globe.

To RSVP for this event, please contact Jinny Khanduja at 212.389.1399 or jkhanduja@demos.org, or click here.