Article

Confronting the Gloves-Off Economy

America’s Broken Labor Standards and How to Fix Them

Heather Boushey and others release a report for the UCLA Institute on Labor and Employment on improving labor standards in the United States.

Also by Annette Bernhardt, Laura Dresser, and Chris Tilly

Across the United States, growing numbers of employers are breaking, bending, or evading long-established laws and standards designed to protect workers, from the minimum wage to job safety rules to the right to organize. This “gloves-off economy,” no longer confined to a marginal set of sweatshops and fly-by-night small businesses, is sending shock waves into every corner of the low-wage—and sometimes not so low-wage—labor market. What can be done to reverse this dangerous trend?

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Authors

Heather Boushey

Former Senior Fellow