The Worker Empowerment Research Network (WERN) is an interdisciplinary network of labor market researchers. This report, “U.S. Workers’ Organizing Efforts and Collective Actions: A Review of the Current Landscape,” is the first research product of network and provides a comprehensive review of the methods U.S. workers are currently using to express their collective voices and assert power in their workplaces. The report explores various the concepts of the “voice gap” and “representation gap,” worker actions—including traditional union organizing, strikes, and work stoppages—the growth of worker centers, and new organizing forms.
The report illustrates how the issues workers care about have expanded beyond traditional wages and hours to include topics ranging from new technologies to protection from workplace abuse. For all stakeholders interested in equitable, productive, and resilient employment relationships, it serves as a starting point for discussion and knwoledge building about the conditons of the US labor movement.
