ReWork Research

We collaborate with workers and community partners to document key trends in low-wage industries and keep employers accountable to labor laws. Our research includes analyzing workplace standards and wage enforcement.

We provide technical assistance, including worker rights trainings, popular education curricula, and research models, for worker centers and unions across multiple industries.

We engage students through internships and hands-on research projects; for example, through the Labor Summer Research Program (LSRP), students research, analyze, and document the challenges for young service employees of working while going to school.

We build relationships between research, community, labor, and government partners to help leaders take action on key workplace issues.

Through our research and partnerships with unions, worker centers, and statewide agencies, ReWork examines conditions in low-wage industries, including retail, garment, restaurant, nail salon, and domestic work, and advocates for safe and dignified jobs. We support policies and enforcement measures that create an economy that works for everyone. These measures include fair scheduling practices, safeguards against wage theft, increased minimum wage, paid sick time, and anti-discrimination protections.

ReWork seeks to engage workers in all aspects of their lives—as parents, students, community members, and leaders. We support parent workers, young workers, Black workers, and immigrants through participatory research approaches, leadership initiatives, and multimedia interventions that empower communities.

The nature of work is shifting away from full-time, long-term jobs toward new forms of precarious employment that can be unpredictable and unstable. ReWork produces research focused on workers in the emerging gig economy and considers the ways technology can help or exploit them. As the economy evolves, we aim to ensure that workers have a voice in setting industry standards and determining how technology is used.