Can Labor Law Reform Encourage Robust Economic Democracy?

Our labor law guarantees only a "thin" form of workplace and economic democracy, one focused on encouraging collective bargaining over fundamental terms of employment, but limiting workers' rights of concerted action and expression in many ways. Progressive unions and their allies have historically sought a "thicker" form of workplace and economic democracy, one in which workers have a voice at all levels of the political economy. Advancing that vision today requires ambitious reforms: to ensure that our labor law protects all vulnerable workers; to guarantee workers real rights to protest and to strike; to make it far easier for workers to unionize; to expand bargaining structures; to give workers the power to co-determine rules at the workplace and firm levels; and to give workers a voice in economic policy