Worker Institute

Using generative AI, fashion designers can use digital photos to adjust models’ features and even deploy fully digital avatars in place of humans. A team including an ILR School researcher has written a paper highlighting models’ challenges.

Patrica Campos-Medina, executive director of ILR’s Worker Institute, is mentioned as a 2025 Schneps Media Leaders of Labor awardee; the award, which recognizes members of the labor community and the organizations that support them, will be presented on Oct. 8 at Terrace on the Park in Queens, New York.

Risa Lieberwitz, ILR professor of labor and employment law, comments on recent workplace firings and employers’ heightened fear of political reprisal.

“It’s a celebration of solidarity with TPS workers,” said Patricia Campos-Medina executive director of The Worker Institute and primary researcher for the “Stories of Belonging” public art and storytelling exhibit about the contributions of immigrants with Temporary Protected Status in the U.S.

A report co-authored by the Worker Institute reveals problems with AI-driven image manipulation in the fashion modeling industry.

Zoë West, a senior researcher of worker rights and equity at ILR’s Worker Institute, comments on issues raised by the latest Empire State poll about balancing unpaid caretaking and paid work. West contributed to the poll project, which was highlighted in ILR’s 2024-25 New York at Work report.

Now in its fifth year, the 2024-25 New York at Work report draws on ILR expertise, research-based data and policy analysis on a broad range of key issues affecting the state’s workers, unions, communities and employers.

This article references a 2018 study by the Laundry Workers Center and Cornell University’s Worker Institute, which found that 86 percent of laundromat workers in New York City are women, most of them immigrants.

Labor organizers and activists from Elmont and other Long Island neighborhoods rallied for immigrant workers’ rights at the Stories of Belonging celebration, at Sisters of St. Joseph Preparatory School in Brentwood, on June 18.

Aiming to have a diverse workforce is not illegal under antidiscrimination laws, said Risa Lieberwitz, ILR professor of labor and employment law.

Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of The Worker Institute, analyzes the role of unions in current events, such as determining the quality of manufacturing jobs created in the U.S. due to Trump administration policies and fighting deportations of those who held Temporary Protected Status.

Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute, discusses Pope Leo XIV's inauguration as a hopeful moment for unions and workers.

Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director for The Worker Institute, says “Extreme heat waves have increased in the last 10 years, so you’re seeing more of a crisis on that, so I hope the administration allows for some minimum guidance.”

Most vending tickets are issued in predominantly white and affluent areas to immigrant and minority sellers living in much poorer outer borough neighborhoods, according to a new report by Andrew Wolf, assistant professor.

REI has not signed an agreement with any of its 11 stores that have voted to unionize over the past three years. “Delaying actually getting to a collective bargaining agreement is a strategy by corporations to kill the will of workers to stay as members of the union,” says Patricia Campos-Medina.

“What they are really asking for is for unions and their community allies to be working together on a coordinated level that is ahistorical,” said Eugene Carroll, a longtime labor educator and organizer and a Worker Institute Fellow.

Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director for The Worker Institute, explains what may occur if the construction, agriculture, hospitality, and retail industries lose workers.

More than a third of cisgender women and half of respondents who identify as transgender or other gender identities reported experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace, according to a new ILR School Worker Institute report.

Led by Patricia Campos-Medina ’96, MPA ’97, it conducts research and outreach on today’s rapidly changing employment landscape

In an open letter to the Class of 2022, Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute, says "You must be comfortable with the tension that exists between going along to get along or challenging the status quo."