Out of sight and out of mind for most of us, at least 1 million farmworkers (estimates vary) in the US harvest tomatoes, strawberries, melons, oranges, and more. These workers endure strenuous working conditions, low pay, long hours, and all-too-frequent abuse, mistreatment, and exposure to chemical and other hazards.

In Florida’s tomato fields, a group of farmworkers came together to improve their working conditions. They formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and won industry agreements to the Fair Food Program, a partnership of farmers, farmworkers, and retail food companies that ensure humane wages and working conditions at participating farms. In her new book, I Am Not a Tractor! How Florida Farmworkers Took on the Fast Food Giants and Won, Susan Marquis tells the story of the Coalition and draws implications for other industries. This event featured a discussion of the book, the Fair Food Program, and the potential for worker-driven social responsibility strategies to improve job quality throughout the nation and world.

This brief outlines some key metrics to consider when designing paid family and medical leave programs. These insights are drawn from the National partnership for Women and Families’ research, consultations with organizations that work with low wage workers, and experiences providing technical assistance to advocates and policymakers. The brief focuses on seven main aspects: setting the benefit amount and duration, eligibility requirements to access paid leave, definitions of “employee” and “employer”, definition of “family member”, waiting period before accessing paid leave, job and benefits protection while receiving family and medical leave insurance benefits, and public education and outreach. This resource can be particularly helpful for policymakers, advocates, researchers, and practitioners.

Headlines warn that changes in retail will lead to disruptive job loss for frontline workers such as cashiers, salespersons, stock clerks, and order fillers. But there may be more to the story. New technologies, the rise of ecommerce, and shifting business strategies, marketing approaches, and customer expectations are altering the way businesses sell, customers shop, and employees work. How will these changes influence retail businesses’ employment practices and the shape of retail jobs? Will the response to these changes vary across segments of the retail industry, whether companies are publicly traded or privately held, small or large, brick-and-mortar or online, or local or multinational? What are the opportunities to create new jobs with potentially more productive, meaningful, and rewarding work?

We invite you to watch What’s in Store: The Future of Work in Retail, a panel discussion on these questions as part of the Economic Opportunities Program‘s Working in America event series.

We like to think that the US labor market is a meritocracy — that people who work hard will attain good jobs, climb the career ladder, or start and grow businesses. The experience of Black Americans, however, raises questions about whether the reality lines up with the ideal. The unemployment rate among Black Americans is roughly double that of White Americans, and Black college graduates are roughly twice as likely to be unemployed as White college graduates. Over the past three decades, Black workers have attained higher levels of education and experience, but have not seen a commensurate increases in earnings, benefits, and economic standing. In this event, panelists discuss how we understand the experience of Black workers in the US, and what it tells us about working in America today.

The American population is getting older. The US Census estimates that, in 2050, the population aged 65 and over will be 83.7 million, almost double its estimated population in 2012, and the surviving baby boomers will be over the age of 85. As the United States ages, direct care workers, such as home care aides and certified nursing assistants, will become essential to many more families. Yet these workers tend to be low-paid and poorly trained and receive little respect for the critical work that they do.

During this event, the panel discusses if such a workforce is capable of addressing the needs of our aging population, and how can we improve the quality of work and healthcare services in an industry of growing national importance.

This is a profile of Charm City Run, a Baltimore-area running and walking specialty store, as part of the Good Companies/Good Jobs initaitive research.

In this report, Investing in Workforce Program Innovation: A Formative Evaluation of Five Workforce Organizations’ Experiences during the Human Capital Innovation Fund Initiative, we describe the five organizations’ experiences planning, implementing, and adapting new strategies. Investing in Workforce Program Innovation offers insights into the complex work of developing and maintaining relationships that cross institutions. We discuss factors grantees considered when identifying partner organizations, the approaches they used to find common ground and work effectively together, and the ways in which partnerships evolved and deepened over time. We describe how organizations cultivated long-term relationships with employers to not only inform workforce program design and promote job placement, but also to engage employers to reflect upon their hiring and employment practices. Finally, we discuss the ways in which HCIF-supported organizations tailored comprehensive and ongoing supports to the unique needs of their participants to help them succeed in and beyond training programs.

This report highlights examples from businesses that are driving innovation and growth by advancing racial equity. These examples are particularly helpful to articulate the business value that advancing job quality and racial equity can provide to corporations and push back on narratives that racial equity work is a distraction from core business values, instead of an integral part of creating good jobs.

This playbook from UpSkill America, an initiative of the Economic Opportunities Program, is designed to highlight examples of employers investing in upskilling strategies to support worker advancement and business competitiveness. This playbook has relevance for employers interested in adopting training and education strategies or for practitioners advising businesses to invest in their workers.

This research examines the experiences of LGBTQ staff of color in nonprofit organizations, who report structural barriers that limit access and opportunity to advance to leadership positions. The report describes the compounding effects of race and sexuality on career advancement for LGBTQ people of color and highlights the role of bias in promotions to leadership positions. This resource can be used to underscore the importance of applying an intersectional lens when developing or refining an organization’s policies and practices related to career advancement.