Recent Work
Working paper: Power and Dignity in the Low-Wage Labor Market: Theory and Evidence from Wal-Mart Workers, NBER Working Paper, September 2022, Arindrajit Dube, Suresh Naidu, and Adam Reich.
Quantitative Tools for Service Sector Organizing, New Labor Forum, February 2021, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Suresh Naidu, Adam Reich, and Patrick Youngblood.
Schooled by Strikes? The Effects of Large-Scale Labor Unrest on Mass Attitudes toward the Labor Movement, Perspectives on Politics, June 2, 2020, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Suresh Naidu, and Adam Reich.
Conference: Fall 2022 conference: The Future of the Labor Movement with The Princeton Economics Program for Research on Inequality.
Overcoming Inequality in Unemployment Benefit Access and Utilization, The Forge, October 19, 2020, Matt Morrison (Working America) and Rebecca Dixon (National Employment Law Project), on our collaboration with Working America to study their efforts to inform Black households of unemployment insurance benefits.
Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart, Peter Bearman and Adam Reich, Columbia University Press, July 2018. An examination of how workers make sense of service sector jobs at a firm like Walmart in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present as sites of struggle for social and economic justice.
Current Projects
We are evaluating the causal impact of labor organizing on health and labor market outcomes in the health care sector. In partnership with a labor union, we have randomized efforts to unionize health care facilities and implement mixed methods data collection around these efforts to obtain the first ever randomization-based causal effects of labor organizing within the health care sector.
In collaboration with Communication Workers of America, we are evaluating the impact of Runaway Inequality political trainings on subsequent union and political activities and beliefs.
In collaboration with United for Respect, we use an experimental design to evaluate the impact of a new form of online organization — facilitated online groups — on those working in low-wage, precarious retail jobs. We are investigating the extent to which such groups lead to better individual-level health outcomes, and whether they lead to participants being more willing to advocate for themselves and their coworkers on their jobs.
Funding Support
- Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- Urban Institute
- Washington Center for Equitable Growth