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Our Mission

Multidisciplinary Community

Bringing together world-leading researchers to shape public policy through innovation, collaboration, and debate.

The Policy Lab is a multidisciplinary community within The Center for Applied Research on Work (CAROW) and the ILR School that connects research on work with the practice of putting it to use. As a home for the robust policy work taking place across Cornell, the CAROW Policy Lab is uniquely positioned to facilitate collaboration between colleagues working on state and national-level policy analysis, recommendations, and tools. Through this collaboration, we ultimately aim to provide the public with the tools to understand and resolve the challenges of our contemporary labor market and its many intersections.

Objectives:

  1. To foster collaboration and innovation among faculty and students across ILR in the topic areas where ILR’s existing policy efforts overlap or intersect, and to dedicate resources to explore areas where they potentially could
  2. To raise the profile of the applied policy work taking place across the ILR School and serve as a hub to host data and content and as a “one-stop-shop” for external policy audiences to easily access and interact with ILR’s work
  3. To convene policymakers, community partners, and other stakeholders with researchers from across the ILR School, in an effort to nimbly address the most relevant policy issues of the day related to labor and work

Policy Lab Stories

Research and Insights

Read more stories from the CAROW Policy Lab

The Minimum Wage

In this post, Russell Weaver, Director of Research for the Buffalo Co-Lab, and Ian Greer, Director of the Ithaca Co-Lab, explain what a minimum wage is meant to do, where current policy falls short, and promising practices that can help ensure a living wage for workers.
Picture of a one-dollar bill
The Minimum Wage

Made in USA: Prison Labor Keeps Slavery Legal in 2024

Anderson Jr. stood before the New York State Senate on Feb. 12 to recount his experience working for Corcraft, an entity operating within the New York State Department of Corrections.
Jodi Anderson - NYS Senate Joint Public Hearing
Made in USA: Prison Labor Keeps Slavery Legal in 2024

Subminimum Wage for People with Disabilities

The Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability's Kaitlyn Jackson and Ellice Switzer discuss the practice of paying subminimum wages to people with disabilities.
Woman working in factory
Subminimum Wage for People with Disabilities

To send in submissions or propose a topic/idea for the Policy Lab, email: carow@cornell.edu.

Policy Lab Members

Our members span ILR's many disciplines, initiatives and research groups. We are made up of researchers and educators, policy specialists, communicators and advocates.

Policy Lab Staff

  • Assistant Director, Content Strategy

  • Director of Research for Worker Rights and Equity, ILR Worker Institute

  • Senior Research and Policy Development Associate

  • Director of Research, ILR Buffalo Co-Lab

Policy Lab Affiliates

  • Director of Technological Innovation, Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative

  • Director of Cornell University ILR’s Labor and Employment Law Program

  • Director of Labor Education Research

  • Director of Workplace Health & Safety Programs Lead Programs Manager/people/nellie-brown

  • Academic Director, Yang-Tan Institute

  • Joseph R. Rich ’80 Professor, Human Resource Studies
  • Academic Director, Institute for Compensation Studies

  • Executive Director, The Worker Institute

  • Research & Policy Development Associate, Climate Jobs Institute

  • Director of Cornell University ILR Buffalo Co-Lab

  • Research Professor
  • Director, ILR Ithaca Co-Lab

  • Policy Associate for the Yang Tan Institute on Employment and Disability

  • Executive Director of the Global Labor Institute

  • Director, Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative

  • Senior Research & Policy Development Associate, Climate Jobs Institute

  • Training and Content Development Associate with the Yang-Tan Institute

  • Director of Research, Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative

  • Director of Training and Curriculum Design, Worker Rights and Equity, ILR Worker Institute

  • Executive Director, Climate Jobs Institute

  • Assistant Director of Research, Climate Jobs Institute

Ellice Switzer

  • Extension Associate with the Yang-Tan Institute

KC Wagner

  • Director of Workplace Issues at Cornell University's ILR Metro District Office in New York City.

  • Senior Researcher, Worker Rights and Equity, ILR Worker Institute

Contact Us

Reach out to the Policy Lab

CAROW Policy Lab
Cornell University, ILR School
Ithaca, NY 14853

Phone: (607) 255-4380

carow@cornell.edu

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