The Worker Institute Publications
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The Worker Institute at Cornell, based at the ILR School, is a broad forum for research and education on contemporary labor issues. The institute applies innovative thinking and a problem-solving approach to the workplace, economy and society, bringing together in collaborative projects researchers, educators and students with practitioners in labor, business, and policymaking. We need this combined expertise and engagement to confront growing economic and social inequalities, in the interests of working people and their families.
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Item Fashion’s Data Doubles: How AI is Reshaping Modeling WorkMateescu, Alexandra; West, Zoë; Pinto, Sanjay (Cornell University, ILR School, Worker Institute, 2025)Generative AI technologies are shifting conditions of work across different creative fields. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews, this research snapshot discusses how new applications of generative AI are affecting fashion models. First, we consider how AI technologies are extending the ability of fashion brands to manipulate models’ images. Next, we discuss key interview findings on the emerging impacts of AI on fashion models, including how models’ images and measurements are increasingly treated as data to extract, non-consensual alteration of models’ images, growing economic insecurity, and propagation of harmful beauty standards—issues that are felt widely but unevenly across the industry. The brief concludes by addressing efforts to strengthen AI governance in the modeling field and beyond.Item Racial Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, and Intimate Partner Violence and the Workplace: Results from the 2024 Empire State PollLenmark, Michael; Campos-Medina, Patricia; West, Zoë; Wagner, KC (Cornell University, ILR School, Worker Institute, 2025-09)[Excerpt] Workplace discrimination, harassment, and gender violence continue to be issues of concern to workers in New York State and across U.S. workplaces. This brief presents analysis of results of the 2024 Empire State Poll concerning rates of racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace, as well as experiences of intimate partner violence and their impacts at work. The brief also discusses how people respond to such situations, with a particular focus on what actions union members have taken. While rates of unionization have been falling throughout the United States, New York State remains one of the most unionized workforces across the country, with 20.6% of New Yorkers belonging to a labor union as of 2024, second only to Hawaii.Item The Role and Value of Social and Labor Protections: Results from the 2024 Empire State PollBrady, Anne Marie; Lenmark, Michael (Cornell University, ILR School, Worker Institute, 2025-09)[Excerpt] The 2024 Empire State Poll surveyed 2,686 respondents in August 2024. New Yorkers from all 62 New York counties participated in the 2024 Empire State Poll (ESP), carried out by the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR). This policy snapshot summarizes findings from questions pertaining to respondents’ wages and benefits and their perception of social and labor protections.Item Unpaid Caregiving and Its Impact on New Yorkers’ Paid Employment 2024West, Zoë; Lenmark, Michael (Cornell University, ILR School, Worker Institute, 2025-09)[Excerpt] This brief presents analysis of data on unpaid caregiving and its impact on New Yorkers’ paid employment from the 2024 statewide Empire State Poll (ESP). Administered by the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), the ESP surveyed 2,686 respondents across New York State in August 2024. The findings detailed below affirm that caregiving—both unpaid caregiving and access to paid care support—remains a pressing concern for the substantial number of New Yorkers who are providing care for children and/or adults. Respondents providing care widely report the toll it takes on their ability to do paid work, with the highest costs reported by people of color and women. The lack of affordable care support stands out as a significant barrier. Taken together, these findings reinforce the urgency of policy responses that recognize and support unpaid caregiving, make care more affordable and accessible, and provide dignified pay and working conditions for caregiving jobs.Item Evaluating the Regulation and Reform Implementation of Street Vending Laws in New York CityWolf, Andrew B.; Hatch, Dylan (Cornell University, ILR School, Worker Institute, 2025-04)Street vending has long been an important entry point to the local labor market for New York City’s immigrant communities. Thousands of New Yorkers build their livelihoods around servicing our tourist industries and provide fresh food to our communities. Recently New York City engaged in a series of reform efforts aimed at lifting barriers to accessing vendor permits and attempts to limit the criminalization of street vending in the City. This report evaluates the regulatory environment which street vendors face investigating the implementation of these reform efforts and the disparate impacts and costs of vending enforcement.Item Regenerative Organizing: A Pilot Program Promoting Personal Healing and Collective Resilience for Care WorkersWest, Zoë; Shapiro, Ariana (Cornell University, ILR School Worker Institute, 2025)[Excerpt] This brief provides an overview of a pilot Regenerative Organizing program addressing stress and trauma for care workers in the New York metropolitan area. The Worker Institute at Cornell University’s ILR School convened a cohort of members and staff from unions and worker organizations of nurses, domestic workers, and home care workers for a months-long training and coaching process in “regenerative practices”—frameworks and tools that support personal and collective wellbeing and foster more resilient collective organizing. Participants learned how to introduce regenerative organizing practices into their unions and organizations through their own daily work (as care workers and as organizers) and through targeted interventions that were tailored to respond to the unique stressors and challenges their members face.Item Domestic Workers Rising: An Evaluation of the We Rise Peer Training ProgramWest, Zoë; Carey, Ketchel; Brady, Anne Marie (Cornell University, ILR School, Worker Institute, 2024)This report is based on an in-depth evaluation of the impact of the We Rise Nanny Training, a peer education program in New York that integrates workers’ rights education with professional development, using popular education pedagogy. The We Rise Nanny Training aims to lift standards in the domestic work industry by training nannies in workers’ rights and negotiation skills; providing professional development that increases their employability; and building their confidence and leadership within the workplace and within the movement for domestic workers’ rights. The evaluation was designed as an 18-month, mixed-methods, longitudinal study that was shaped by the principles of community-based participatory research. The research included a longitudinal survey comprised of a baseline, midline, and endline survey; qualitative interviews with training participants; focus groups with peer trainers; and qualitative interviews with training coordinators and organization staff. Research was conducted in English, Spanish, and Nepali. Our analysis suggests that the We Rise Nanny Training strengthens participants’ ability and drive to negotiate with their employers for increased wages and better working conditions, and to secure measures such as written contracts and overtime pay. Participants drew confidence and motivation to negotiate from learning about their rights and fair standards, recognizing the value of their labor as domestic workers, and receiving a certificate from the Worker Institute at Cornell University. Our research also found that the peer and popular education design of the We Rise training appears to instill in participants the sense that they are part of a greater movement of domestic workers pushing for industry-wide change, thus bolstering their confidence and drive to make change in their own workplaces and across the industry. Findings suggest that organizations use the We Rise Nanny Training to support their broader strategies to lift standards across the industry: as a base-building channel; a vehicle for leadership development; and as a “leadership ladder” where nannies can become peer trainers and We Rise “captains.” Our analysis also suggests that the training influences participants to become more involved in activities that are central to lifting standards in the industry and expanding the movement for domestic workers’ rights—sharing information with other nannies, doing outreach and recruitment with other nannies, and engaging in organizing and advocacy activities.Item Essential but Unprotected: App-based Food Couriers in New York CityFigueroa, Maria; Guallpa, Ligia; Wolf, Andrew B.; Tsitouras, Glendy; Colón-Hernandez, Hildalyn (Cornell University, ILR School, Workers Institute, 2023)[Excerpt] This report contains the findings from a participatory action research project that examined the working and living conditions of delivery workers engaged by digital platforms (also known as apps) to deliver restaurant food orders to consumers in New York City. The research was conducted under a partnership between the worker center Workers’ Justice Project and The Worker Institute of Cornell University’s ILR School, and involved both primary and secondary research, including a survey of 500 app-based couriers doing deliveries in NYC, focus groups of workers, and individual interviews. The goal of this report is to raise awareness among stakeholders about the challenges that the tens of thousands of app-based delivery workers confront in NYC, to inform policy and advocacy efforts that would improve labor standards and workplace safety in this industry. Highlights of the study findings follow.Item Building Responsible Projects in New York City: Assessing the Impact of Prevailing Wage Benefits on Workers, Contractors, and the New York City EconomyWeaver, Russell; Brady, Anne Marie (Cornell University, ILR School, The Workers Institute, 2023)[Excerpt] Extant literature on prevailing wage (PW) laws notes that such laws generate societal benefits in the form of upward pressure on wages and benefits for non-union workers, as well as protection of local construction industries (workers, workers’ families, and employers alike) from the wage and benefit erosion that could happen if external competition entered the local market from lower-wage geographies and persistently undercut local firms. This research report illustrates how, beyond these and related benefits, PW laws might make union construction labor more cost effective than non-union construction labor for PW jobs. Such an outcome could have significant upsides. Among other things, supporting union firms: increases those firms’ ability to take on, train, and pay new apprentices, thereby paving the way for a future experienced, high-quality workforce; gives those firms more capacity to hire additional qualified workers at journey and provisional levels, thereby putting upward pressure on union density in the industry; and, arguably, puts pressure on non-union firms to raise wages and benefits to levels that are more competitive with their union counterparts. In other words, insofar as PW laws contribute to stronger unions and better compensated workers, they are “high road” policies that can lead to greater shared prosperity in local economies over time.Item Unpaid Care Work and Its Impact on New Yorkers’ Paid EmploymentWest, Zoë; Brady, Anne Marie (Cornell University, ILR School, The Workers Institute, 2023-06)The widening gulf between the vast need for care in our society and the limited accessibility of care has led us into a “crisis of care.” While the need for care is universal, care work has been relegated to the status of a private concern since the rise of capitalist industrialization. As the increasingly sharp divisions between the public realm of the market and the private realm of the home led to more fixed and gendered divisions between productive labor (“men’s work”) and reproductive labor (“women’s work”), the labor of caring—for children, for elders, for those with illness or disability—was devalued, whether unpaid or paid. This pattern has been reinforced by neoliberal restructuring of the economy and public services, even amid shifts in labor market participation and changes in gendered norms of care work in the family. To explore current patterns of unpaid caregiving and its impact on New Yorkers’ paid employment, this policy brief shares relevant findings from the 2022 Empire State Poll, carried out by the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR).