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About Equity at Work

The Equity at Work initiative examines how the workplace is impacted by the evolving and changing norms of the social construction of gender roles, identity, and expression. This includes discussion of current and evolving workers' rights, the workplace contexts in which they currently exist, and individual, organizational and cultural interventions that promote and expand employment issues of respect, fairness, equity and justice.

We seek to promote productive approaches to issues of diversity and equity which are fundamental to worker rights and instrumental for effective collective representation.

Lending itself to a broad-based multidisciplinary framework within the ILR School, across Cornell University and with stakeholders, the initiative contributes to effective workplace equity models.

Questions that inform our work include:

  • How are unions and worker organizations responding to the changing demographics of their membership and new expressions of representational needs?
  • How have workers previously not afforded workplace representation rights developed new forms of organization based on worker identities and communities?
  • How have these worker organizations influenced both traditional unions and workplaces?
  • How does the expansion of workplace rights impact the experience of equity and fairness in the workplace by LGBTQ and HIV-affected workers?
  • What are the workplace consequences of gender-based violence such as domestic and sexual violence, stalking, street harassment, and bullying? How should unions and workplaces address and prevent such actions and thereby contribute to the discourse for social change?
  • What are the interpersonal and organizational factors that influence actors in the workplace to take a stand against what they perceive to be inequities in the workplace?
  • How can we partner with key worker associations and employer, government and community-based coalitions to focus on the policy, research and practical applications which link quality of care issues for consumers with issues of worker dignity and model standards of working conditions?
  • How do the dynamics of the gendered nature of interpersonal relationships influence the consequences of how decision are made about work and family across regions, occupational sectors, union and non-union status, income, etc.?

Research and Publications

Lively Panel Launches Worker Institute’s New Prevailing Wage Report

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.
WI Prevailing Wage event
Lively Panel Launches Worker Institute’s New Prevailing Wage Report

Labor Day 2023: ILR’s Worker Institute Reflects and Recommits

We at the Worker Institute are proud of our continued work to support union and worker justice leaders with research, training, and education. We seek to equip change-makers with the skills to challenge the increasing levels of income inequality and worker precarity.
Labor Day 2023 Image
Labor Day 2023: ILR’s Worker Institute Reflects and Recommits

Amazon Labor Organizers Encourage Solidarity

For more than 300 days, Amazon workers talked with their peers to build relationships, trust and, ultimately, a union that many thought would never be possible, Amazon Labor Union leaders said at ILR during Union Days.
Chris Small speaks at 2013 Union Days
Amazon Labor Organizers Encourage Solidarity

Contact

For more information on our Equity at Work initiative contact: equityatwork@cornell.edu. 

  • Director of Training and Curriculum Design, Equity and Worker Rights, ILR Worker Institute

Arianna Schindle joins the Worker Institute as an Extension Associate for Training and Organizational Development under the Worker Rights and Equity Team.

  • Director of Workplace Issues at Cornell University's ILR Metro District Office in New York City.

KC Wagner is the Director of Workplace Issues at Cornell University's ILR Metro District Office in New York City.