All Publications

The State of Working Wisconsin – Update 2009 gives a snapshot of the effects of the recession on Wisconsin workers and their families, and reports on other key trends.

Across the United States, growing numbers of employers are breaking, bending, or evading long-established laws and standards designed to protect workers, from the minimum wage to job safety rules to the right to organize. This “gloves-off economy,” no longer confined to a marginal set of sweatshops and fly-by-night small businesses, is sending shock waves into every corner of the low-wage — and sometimes not so low-wage — labor market. What can be done to reverse this dangerous trend?

This report, based on the book The Gloves-Off Economy: Labor Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market (a Labor and Employment Relations Association volume published by Cornell University Press), provides a comprehensive yet compact summary of gloves-off practices, the workers who are affected by them, and strategies for enforcing workplace standards. The editors, four prominent labor scholars including COWS’ Associate Director Laura Dresser, have brought together economists, sociologists, labor attorneys, union strategists, and other experts to offer varying perspectives on both the problem and the creative, practical solutions currently being developed in a wide range of communities and industries. Bernhardt, Boushey, Dresser, and Tilly and the volume’s 18 other authors combine rigorous analysis with a stirring call to renew worker protections.

This report evaluates Madison Area Technical College‘s (MATC’s) Science/Math Bridge, a pilot initiative to increase opportunities for lower-skill individuals to access – and succeed in – the college’s science-based postsecondary programs.

This report makes the case for a higher minimum wage in Wisconsin. Though the July 23, 2009, increase of the federal and state minimum wage to $7.25 will put money in the pockets of 196,000 Wisconsin working adults. A proposal by state leaders to increase the state minimum to $7.60 and index it annually to inflation would bring higher wages to some 316,000 workers and put $108 million dollars into the economy.

This article, published in the International Labor Brief of the Korea Labor Institute, discusses the formation of the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership/BIG STEP, its maturation as a key labor market intermediary in the Milwaukee regional economy, and how it is faring in the current economic crisis.

Documents include original and English Translation.

This report asserts that this new generation of coal plants would comply more easily with current and projected environmental regulations and provide more stable employment for utility workers than traditional coal plants.  Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants, with their potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS), may be an important piece of this energy future, especially as carbon regulation comes into effect.