Labor and Worklife Program

On Earth Day, we highlight some of the work being done by Harvard Law students, scholars, clinics, and programs to address some our most pressing environmental issues.

A new study led by Dr. Ashley Nunes, a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, concluded that, counterintuitively, fleets of electric, autonomous taxis could dramatically increase energy consumption and emissions that contribute to climate change — not reduce them.

Harvard Law Today asked Professor Benjamin Sachs to tell us if the Biden administration is keeping its promises on labor and employment, how it’s doing — and what problems it may encounter down the road.

Since President Joe Biden took office in January, dozens of Harvard Law community members, including faculty and alumni, have been tapped to serve in high-profile positions in his administration

Sharon Block and Ben Sachs of Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program discuss COVID-19’s continued impact on the workplace and worker’s rights to a safe and healthy work environment.

The Harvard Gazette sat down with Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs of Harvard's Labor and Worklife Program to talk about their report "Clean Slate for Worker Power: Building a Just Democracy and Economy," and about what they envision for the future of labor law in the United States.

Speaking at Harvard Law School, U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III '09 (D., Mass.) called Monday for a new national economic agenda based on “moral capitalism” that addresses the needs of embattled workers.

On August 31, Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, in collaboration with the University of Reading, organized a workshop on the “Past and Future of Labor Provisions in the Context of Trade.”

In July, Harvard’s Labor and Worklife Program began an ambitious effort to fix a broken system of labor laws. The program, with the overall title “Rebalancing Economic and Political Power: A Clean Slate for the Future of Labor Law,” began with a daylong seminar at Wasserstein Hall last month.

Tom Perez M.P.P./J.D. ’87, former Secretary of Labor under President Obama and the current chair of the Democratic National Committee. At the John T. Dunlop Memorial Forum Lecture at Harvard Law School on Feb. 6, Perez addressed the future of organized labor and the challenges of income inequality in the United States.

In a recent talk at Harvard Law School, labor leader Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employers (AFSCME), delivered remarks on the current state of unions and the need for them to adapt to face contemporary challenges.

Harvard Law School Professor Benjamin Sachs, a labor law specialist who focuses on unions in politics, sat down with a reporter for the HLS News office to reflect on the Supreme Court's increased involvement in labor cases and the state of labor law today.

William Bratton, former Los Angeles police chief and police commissioner of New York, discussed his new book, “Collaborate or Perish! Reaching across Boundaries in a Networked World” (New York: Crown Business, 2012), at the 13th annual Police Union Leadership Seminar hosted by the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

Will knowledge, information, and communication workers of the world unite? This question was explored by Vincent Mosco, professor emeritus of communications at Queen's University, Canada, at a presentation sponsored by the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School on September 19.

The only way we can keep Americans fully employed and maintain our global lead is by constantly improving their productivity and skills, writes Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, in an op-ed in today's Washington Post. In his op-ed,  "On jobs, Obama needs to be a radical," published on the eve on the president's address to the nation, Wadhwa writes that American companies must be provided with the incentives to invest in their workers as they used to.

The op-ed, “Immigration and the death of the recovery,” by Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, appeared June 29 in the Washington Post. According to Wadhwa, the United States economy will suffer unless we make it easier for foreign nationals who have studied in the U.S. to stay in the country to start their careers.  

Officially, it’s the “Annual Police Union Leadership Seminar,” but it’s more memorably known as “The Big 50”—Harvard Law School’s convention of police union leaders from the fifty largest cities in the United States.