Our work.
Projects & partnerships
Randomized Trial: Returns to Organizing
In partnership with a healthcare labor union, we are evaluating the causal impact of labor organizing on health and labor market outcomes in the healthcare sector.
We have randomized efforts in a multi-year statewide campaign to unionize health care facilities, employing mixed methods data collection around these efforts to obtain the first ever randomization-based causal effects of labor organizing within the health care sector.
Predictive Modeling: Leadership and Engagement
In collaboration with SEIU Local 32BJ, we analyzed membership data to fit a statistical model of the likelihood of members taking on a leadership role, such as strike captain, in a contract campaign, producing lists of higher-likelihood leaders among existing members. We randomized the sharing of these lists with field representatives in order to test the real-world effectiveness of this strategy.
We have conducted a similar modeling exercise with Communication Workers of America.
Randomized Trial: The Impact of Union Pre-Apprenticeships after Prison Release
We are designing a multi-year randomized controlled trial to evaluate the causal impact of the Pathways to Apprenticeship (P2A) program, a pre-apprenticeship initiative designed to connect formerly incarcerated individuals with union jobs in the construction industry.
United for Respect
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.
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- Jobs to Move America
- Freedom Together Foundation (JPB)
- Arnold Foundation
- Omidyar Network
- Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- Urban Institute
- Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Papers & publications
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.
Perspectives on Politics, June 2, 2020, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Suresh Naidu, and Adam Reich.
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.
Conferences
The Future of the Labor Movement (Fall 2022) with The Princeton Economics Program for Research on Inequality.