Public Impact

App workers receive minimal benefits and protection. Termination decisions are made by algorithms, which are prone to error and discriminatory customer abuse. ILR Assistant Professor Andrew Wolf describes how policies that provide just cause protections for app-based workers can address this problem.

Making Work Work: Quality Work and Quality Care to Support Labor Market Participation and Retention of Care Workers and Care Recipients, is a new collaboration between The Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability and The Worker Institute.

This report, co-produced by GLI and the International Finance Corporation, with input from the International Labour Organization’s Better Work team, build upon past GLI research and examines the impacts of heat stress and flooding on the apparel industry.

On a panel, "Crisis at the NLRB: Legal Challenges, Political Power, Future Labor Rights," moderated by Mark Gaston Pearce, lawyer and Georgetown professor, Cathy Creighton, Director, Cornell ILR Buffalo, spoke alongside two former General Counsels of the NLRB, Jennifer Abruzzo and Richard Griffin, Jr. and American labor activist, Richard Bensinger.

Work requirements tied to receiving public benefits have a long history in the U.S. that is based on discriminatory ideas of deservedness. ILR researchers Anne Marie Brady and Devin Wiggs break down the flawed origins of work requirements, which have recently been expanded by federal law.

Researchers are evaluating an Oregon-based career program for people with disabilities that includes a coaching component.

YTI’s recent efforts in our home state of New York have included improving opportunities for people with disabilities to obtain competitive, integrated employment and supporting New York’s efforts to become a model employer of people with disabilities.

This video examines the unemployment insurance application and appeals process in New York. Including interviews with legal professionals and a former claimant, the video informs viewers on the steps of the UI application process, best practices when applying for UI and what to expect during the application and appeals process.

Members of Cornell ILR School's Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative explain how the use of criminal background checks became a commonplace hiring practice in the US over time, bringing with it issues for job candidates as well as for employers and society at large.

Home care cooperatives may be the key to alleviating the shortage of paid caregivers for older Americans, according to a new study co-authored by Ariel Avgar, Ph.D. ’08, and Dr. Madeline Sterling, A&S ’08, director of ILR’s Initiative on Home Care Work.

Cornell ILR’s Worker Institute recently published a new report, “Evaluating the Regulation and Reform Implementation of Street Vending Laws in New York City,” by Andrew B. Wolf and Dylan M. Hatch.

New findings from the Initiative on Home Care Work at Cornell University’s Center for Applied Research on Work (CAROW) points to how stakeholders can use AI more fairly in home health care and low-wage work settings.

Join Executive Director Jason Judd, GLI Visiting Fellow Samira Rafaela and Former Special Representative for International Labor Affairs Kelly Fay Rodríguez on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, 1pm EDT for a keynote presentation on forced labor regulations around the world.

The ILR Buffalo Co-Lab research project was undertaken in collaboration with the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women which is seeking to determine the extent of a gender wage gap in order make recommendation on how such wage inequities can be addressed and eradicated.

On December 3rd, 2024, the United States Department of Labor proposed a new rule to end the 14c waiver program for people with disabilities. The Yang-Tan Institute's Ellice Switzer responds to a Q&A on the new proposed rule.

Discovering that you owe the government thousands of dollars in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) overpayments can be life-disrupting. These overpayments happen at no fault of the beneficiary. Jennifer Brooks, a researcher at the Cornell ILR School's Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, provides a personal account of this issue.

Zoë West, senior researcher for worker rights and equity at Cornell ILR’s The Worker Institute (WI), has been selected as one of the Engaged Faculty Fellows for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Matt is fascinated by the law and its relationship to disability and criminal justice. He is an energetic teacher and researcher in Cornell University’s ILR School, and he has taken on roles involving equity in employment.

Jennifer D. Brooks and Sarah von Schrader investigated how access to remote work for people with disabilities has been affected since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Second Chance Month, Cornell ILR’s Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative (CJEI) launched a beta version of its Restorative Record, a digital hiring tool for justice-impacted job candidates to secure employment against exclusionary practices and stigma.

Join us on Wednesday, April 24, for the Center for Applied Research on Work's webinar "Qualified But Denied: How Policy Change Can Expand Access to Employment for Justice-Impacted New Yorkers."

Register now and join Cornell ILR Buffalo Co-Lab, Partnership for the Public Good, national and local community and labor representatives for Uniting on the High Road: A Conference on Economic Justice at the Local Level on June 20-22, 2024, in Buffalo, NY.

An op-ed in The Hill recommends improvements for how the Social Security Administration manages overpayments to workers with disabilities.

Four people affiliated with ILR helped foster a $750,000 grant supporting the Ray Corollary Initiative's mission to increase diversity within the alternative dispute resolution profession.

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.

Postdoctoral fellow Youbin Kang will work with Professors Gleeson and Griffith to research recent policy changes by the Department of Homeland Security.

A Future of Work project is assessing what unfolds for both employees – and their hiring managers – during their first months on the job.

Differences in wages and compensation are one of the primary sources of economic inequality. ILR's Anne Marie Brady and Russell Weaver explain prevailing wage, and why it matters.

Bart de Koning is part of the ILR’s Labor Dynamics Institute.

Join the ILR Global Labor Institute in New York City to discuss three big topics: climate breakdown and global production, due diligence and lead firm liability, and identifying forced labor.

As a companion to the living wage explainer, here we explore details about calculating meaningful living wages.

We explain how you can figure out a meaningful living wage for an area. We help make sense of the kinds of data you need, and link to calculators for more exploration.

A new free website explains work incentives that assist people who receive government disability benefits with moving ahead in their careers.

Prevailing wage laws protect New Yorkers from a race to the bottom, panelists said during the launch of the new report by Cornell ILR’s The Worker Institute on Sept. 12.

A seven-year, multi-university partnership will examine migrant workers and international mobility programs in New Zealand, also known as Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and the U.S.

The center facilitates new partnerships within the ILR School and across Cornell to improve work, labor and employment.

After a decade of training supported employment specialists in New York, the Yang-Tan Institute shares some successes and looks to the future.

New column in Harvard Data Science Review edited from LDI

More than 3,000 justice-involved people, employers, law enforcement personnel and others have received training since 2018 through an ILR program.

Drawing on faculty expertise in labor relations, labor law, anthropology, economics, history, political science and sociology, the Global Labor and Work Department studies workers, employers and the government policies affecting them.

A recent profile by the American Psychological Association shares expert advice from Susanne Bruyère for recruiting and hiring people who are neurodiverse. It also discusses the importance of neurodiversity in the workplace.

The Cornell ILR Empire State Poll (ESP) 2022 shows that over 68% of New York residents are concerned about the impacts of climate change and more than 70% of New Yorkers have been impacted by climate change in the past five years