Economic Policy Institute

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Economic Policy Institute

Also see: Economic Policy Institute Employee Free Choice Act Statement

About

The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit Washington D.C. think tank, was created in 1986 to:[1]

broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. Today, with global competition expanding, wage inequality rising, and the methods and nature of work changing in fundamental ways, it is as crucial as ever that people who work for a living have a voice in the economic discourse.

EPI claims to be the first — and the premier —

...organization to focus on the economic condition of low- and middle-income Americans and their families. Its careful research on the status of American workers has become the gold standard in that field. Its encyclopedic State of Working America, issued every two years since 1988, is stocked in university libraries around the world. EPI researchers, who often testify to Congress and are widely cited in the media, first brought to light the disconnect between pay and productivity that marked the U.S. economy in the 1990s and is now widely recognized as a cause of growing inequality.

While claiming to be non partisan, many EPI personnel, including President Lawrence Mishel are linked to Democratic Socialists of America, the Institute for Policy Studies or both.

Suggestions for Lori Chavez-DeRemer

A statement dated November 25, 2024 from Celine McNicholas of the Economic Policy Institute on Lori Chavez-DeRemer titled "The policies that will determine whether Trump’s labor secretary pick supports workers":[2],[3]

"President-elect Donald Trump recently announced his nomination of Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as Secretary of Labor. She is one of only three House Republicans to co-sponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and one of only eight Republicans to co-sponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. Both bills would help reform our nation’s badly broken system of labor law. While Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer’s support for these needed reforms is encouraging, if confirmed, she will be Secretary of Labor for a president who steadfastly pursued an ambitious anti-worker agenda during his first term in office.
Chavez-DeRemer has stated that “working-class Americans finally have a lifeline” with President-elect Trump in the White House. If workers truly have an ally in Chavez-DeRemer, she will advance policies that improve workers’ lives. Here are a few policies that will reveal whether the second Trump administration will actually aid working-class Americans or be a continuation of his first administration’s agenda attacking workers’ rights.
Win funding for the Department of Labor (DOL) that enables the agency to serve the U.S. workforce: DOL and other worker protection agencies have been chronically underfunded. As the workforce has grown, the budgets of these agencies have shrunk, leaving workers without effective enforcement of basic minimum wage and overtime and health and safety protections. Chavez-DeRemer should fight for and secure at least a $14 billion budget to ensure that U.S. workers have health and safety inspectors and wage and hour investigators on the job to enforce their rights.
Protect workers’ overtime: Overtime pay ensures that most workers who put in more than 40 hours a week get paid 1.5 times their regular pay for the extra hours they work. Most hourly workers are guaranteed the right to overtime pay, while salaried workers’ eligibility is based on their pay and the nature of their duties. DOL recently issued a rule to raise the pay threshold for salaried workers to be eligible for overtime, which stands to benefit 4.3 million workers. Despite this benefit to U.S. workers, corporate interest groups and conservative states challenged the rule in court. Chavez-DeRemer should fight for workers’ right to overtime and continue to defend this rule in litigation. She should not allow the Trump administration to, once again, institute a low salary threshold for overtime eligibility that leaves millions of workers without these protections and forced to work long hours for no additional pay.
Refuse to reinstitute the Payroll Audit Independent Determination program: This program was instituted during Trump’s first administration and essentially permits employers who have stolen workers’ wages to confess and get out of jail free. If an employer proactively notified DOL of the failure to pay minimum wage or overtime or for taking illegal deductions from workers’ paychecks, then DOL waived all penalties and liquidated damages. Wage theft is rampant, costing U.S. workers as much as $50 billion each year. Any program that makes it easier and less costly for employers to steal workers’ wages is a program that hurts U.S. workers and their wages. Chavez-DeRemer should make it harder for employers to steal workers’ wages, not easier.
Promote policies to protect workers’ health and safety: DOL’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is responsible for ensuring U.S. workers are safe on the job. Still, 344 workers die each day from hazardous working conditions. Under the prior Trump administration, OSHA scaled back safety inspections. Chavez-DeRemer should ensure that OSHA does not repeat this under her watch and instead expands inspections to ensure that all workers have a safe workplace. Further, she should fight to protect safety standards like the recently proposed standard protecting workers from extreme heat. Workers’ health and safety must be a priority for any Secretary of Labor and administration claiming to be pro-worker.
Hold employers accountable for exploiting workers: Some employers use workers’ immigration status as leverage to exploit workers, threatening them with deportation if they report violations of labor and employment laws. For workers in labor disputes, the current administration granted deferred action, which is a determination to defer removal (deportation) of an individual from the U.S. In order to qualify for deferred action, a worker’s employer must be the subject of an open investigation at a labor agency, like DOL, and the labor agency conducting the investigation must submit a letter supporting deferred action to the Department of Homeland Security which oversees the program. Deferred action helps hold lawbreaking employers accountable, and Chavez-DeRemer should continue to support this for workers whose employers are being investigated for violating the law. If she is confirmed, she should fight to ensure the Trump administration provides deferred action for workers whose rights have been violated and should work to issue letters in support of deferred action for eligible workers.
These are just a few actions Chavez-DeRemer could take to demonstrate her commitment to workers. If confirmed as Secretary of Labor, Chavez-DeRemer should not follow the playbook of Trump’s first administration that used populist pro-worker rhetoric while advancing an anti-worker agenda that proved deeply harmful to U.S. workers.

Member of the FACT Coalition

Economic Policy Institute is a member of the FACT Coalition.[4]

Partner Organization of ProsperUS

Economic Policy Institute is listed as a "Partner Organization" of ProsperUS,[5] a coalition of leftist groups formed during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic to demand massive government spending, including Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" spending bill.[6],[7],[8]

Statement on Biden's Build Back Better Spending Bill

A statement Posted on September 20, 2021 titled "Seventeen winners of the Nobel Prize in economics sign letter in support of the President’s Build Back Better package" argues that more money must be "invested" now in those things not traditionally thought of as infrastructure such as "human capital, the care economy, research and development, public education, and more..." [9]

The statement:

The American economy appears set for a robust recovery in part due to active government interventions over the past year and a half, including President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. But, reversing years of disinvestment in public goods and addressing the country’s long-term needs—including building toward sustainable and inclusive growth and facilitating our clean energy transition—will require more.
Success in the 21st century will require building upon the bi-partisan infrastructure deal that has passed the Senate, which prioritizes investments in our nation’s “hard” infrastructure. The President’s Build Back Better agenda employs a broader conception of infrastructure by making critical investments in human capital, the care economy, research and development, public education, and more, which will reduce families’ costs.
While we all have different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we believe that key components of this broader agenda are critical—including tax reforms that make our tax system more equitable and that enable our system to raise the additional funds required to facilitate necessary public investments and achieve our collective goals. Because this agenda invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressures.
Signed by 17 recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences:

Founders

EPI founders include Jeff Faux, EPI’s first president, economist Barry Bluestone of Northeastern University, Robert Kuttner, columnist for Business Week and Newsweek and editor of The American Prospect, Ray Marshall, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas-Austin, Gerald McEntee of AFSCME Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor and professor at UC Berkeley and economist Lester Thurow of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Dissemination

From its findings;[10]

EPI publishes books, studies, issue briefs, popular education materials, and other publications; sponsors conferences and seminars; briefs policy makers at all levels of government; provides technical support to national, state, and local activists and community organizations; testifies before national, state, and local legislatures; and provides information and background to the print and electronic media. Over the course of a year, EPI is called upon hundreds of times to inform policy debates, citizens’ group meetings, and educational forums. Moreover, EPI is typically cited more than 3,000 times a year in the print media alone, and its staff is seen or heard by approximately 85 million television and radio viewers and listeners.

Staff

EPI’s staff includes eight Ph.D.-level researchers, a half dozen policy analysts and research assistants, and a full communications and outreach staff. EPI also works closely with a national network of scholars.

Directors

Economic Policy Institute Board of Directors, 2011;[11]

Economic Policy Institute Board of Directors, 2009;

Congressional Progressive Caucus event

An article at In These Times by Rebecca Burns titled "Tax the Hell Out of the Rich, When They’re Alive and When They’re Dead" dated February 8, 2019 was also posted at the Congressional Progressive Caucus website:[12],[13]

"An incredible thing has happened in 2019: We’re actually talking seriously about taxing the rich. And the debate is not over whether to do it, but how.
Within the month of January, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders proposed separate measures that would, respectively, increase top marginal tax rates on income, levy a direct tax on wealth and interrupt intergenerational transfers of fortunes.
It’s important to note that these policies are not in any way mutually exclusive: When it comes to billionaires, we can tax them when they’re alive, and we can tax them when they’re dead!
But given that these proposals are already framing the terms of debate for the 2020 presidential contest, we can still ask which approach goes the furthest in abating inequality and removing the stranglehold of billionaires on our politics.
And, it turns out, there are a few different ways to answer that question. Warren’s wealth tax would raise the most money — around $2.75 trillion over the next decade, according to the calculations of experts backing her proposal. But the amount of money added to public coffers isn’t the only factor in evaluating a progressive taxation plan. Somewhat counter-intuitively, taxes on the super-rich should bring in less revenue over time because they are having a broader effect on reducing inequality and therefore the amount of concentrated wealth or income to be taxed.
That’s where two other sets of political considerations come in: How a plan to tax the rich will promote other beneficial effects, like shoring up worker bargaining power, and how it will send a political message and advance a broader working-class agenda.
There are of course also plenty of important details that go into how well a progressive tax plan actually works — how effectively it closes loopholes, how it identifies and counts assets to be taxed, etc. But those are highly technical in nature, and not as easily understood by the general public. So here, I’m going to consider the political messages that, to date, seem best conveyed through each approach.
Warren’s plan: It’s time for the rich to pay their fair share
Warren’s ​“ultra-millionaire” tax is sweeping in its ambition. It’s also the most radical, in the sense that we haven’t done it before.
Unlike higher income and estate taxes — which were in effect for decades — a wealth tax has primarily been the stuff of progressive economists’ fantasies. What’s more, one of the most popular proposals to date — put forward in a paper by the Institute for Policy Studies — has been a 1 percent tax on the wealthiest 0.1 percent, or those with assets of over $20 million. Warren’s proposal would tax fewer people — those with more than $50 million in assets, an estimated 75,000 families — but she would bump up the rate to 2 percent. Households with more than $1 billion in assets would get a 3 percent rate.
Warren’s proposal is extremely popular. A YouGov poll funded by Data For Progress found 61 percent overall support, including 76 percent support among Democrats and even a plurality of support among Republicans, 44 percent to 37 percent. It’s also earning accolades from center-left economists like Paul Krugman.
That doesn’t mean it’s not shaking up the status quo. At the heart of the policy is a legal argument that it’s not unconstitutional to tax wealth, and a moral and political argument that, in fact, we need to.
Where Warren’s proposal would probably be insufficient on its own is that it wouldn’t offer a particularly aggressive corrective to inequality over time. It would raise trillions for social programs, which is crucially important and would certainly have other beneficial political effects. But, as a result of the tax, the fabulously wealthy would be only slightly less fabulously so.
And while Warren has floated some potential programs that her wealth tax could pay for — universal childcare, student loan relief, millions of units of new affordable housing — campaigning on a wealth tax divorced from a specific political program could make it harder to mobilize people by laying out clear stakes.
Ocasio-Cortez: Tax the Rich or Torch the Planet
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez kicked off this blessed discussion last month, when asked during a ​“60 Minutes” interview how she would pay for a Green New Deal:
“You look at our tax rates back in the ​’60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system. Your tax rate, you know, let’s say, from zero to $75,000 may be ten percent or 15 percent, et cetera. But once you get to, like, the tippy tops — on your 10 millionth dollar — sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.”
By even the most optimistic estimates, this would bring in only a quarter of the revenues Warren’s plan would generate.
But at a Wednesday forum hosted by Ocasio-Cortez and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Economic Policy Institute President Thea Lee called hiking marginal rates for top earners the ​“obvious and optimal starting point.”
Among other political benefits, there’s evidence that higher income tax rates would change the behavioral calculus of owners and CEOs by curbing their bargaining for ever-higher earnings. If the last million dollars someone makes is going to go mostly to taxes anyway, there’s less incentive to fight for it by, for example, keeping employee’s pay stagnant.
Along these lines, the Institute for Policy Studies has proposed linking top income tax rates to the minimum wage.
Moreover, while wealth inequality is even greater than income inequality, the latter contributes to the former over time.
The Center for Economic Progress’ Eileen Appelbaum summarized this relationship at Wednesday’s forum. The top earners can’t spend their incomes on themselves, so they use them to buy more assets and continue to get wealthier.
“Unless we do something along the lines of what AOC has suggested, this situation will continue,” said Appelbaum.
Beyond these slightly more technical considerations, AOC’s framing has made the stakes crystal clear: If we want to save the planet, we can’t afford not to tax the rich.
Sanders: Abolish Billionaires
Bernie Sanders’ plan involves restoring top marginal tax rates on inheritances to where they were in the 1970s: 77 percent for estates over $1 billion.
The plan would also decrease the threshold for the inheritance tax from $11.18 million to $3.5 million and impose a 45 percent rate on this lower (but still very rich by any normal standard) tier. Even with this new threshold, just 0.2 percent of Americans would ever pay an estate tax. Thus, in the style of Occupy, the plan is called ​“For the 99.8 Percent Act.”
Again, Sanders’ plan would probably raise less revenue than Warren’s: About $315 billion over a decade. But by taking aim at the ultra-rich as a class, it also singles out the kind of dynastic wealth that allows a few families to wreak havoc on our political system. Just three families with multi-generational wealth — the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars — have a combined fortune of $343 billion, more than 3.5 million times the median wealth of U.S. families. And they use that wealth to fund all manner of right-wing policies.
The Right has steadily chipped away at the effectiveness of our existing estate tax for decades, painting it as a ​“death tax” on families who just lost loved ones. Admittedly, this plan would require billionaires to die before it raises significant revenue — an estimated $2.2 trillion.
Does that mean it’s vulnerable to the ​“death tax” rhetoric? Maybe. But in a delightfully petty move, the Sanders plan actually lists out how much money the rest of us would get when specific people like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet depart this Earth — $101 billion, $74 billion and $64 billion, respectively.
Taken alongside Sanders’ broader efforts to target Bezos and the Waltons over worker pay, this plan sends a clear message: Billionaires are bad, and the sooner they and their unearned influence kick the solid-gold bucket, the better for the rest of us. And that message is gaining steam.
To achieve left priorities like a Green New Deal, Medicare for All and universal childcare, we probably need some version of all three of these types of taxes. But it’s important to evaluate not just how much of the price tag new progressive taxes would cover, but how they would transform the balance of power, invigorate our politics and mobilize Americans around achieving bold, transformative policies.

EPI research associates

EPI research associates, as at 2010;[14]

EPI staff

As of 2011;[15]

Office of the President

Senior Staff

Communications

Media Relations

Publications

Web

Development

External and Government Affairs

Finance & Administration

Research and Policy

Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN)

Board of Directors 2021

As of November 2, 2021, the following individuals were listed as Board Members at the Economic Policy Institute website:[16]

Elizabeth H. Shuler is president of the 56 unions and 12.5 million members of the AFL-CIO. Prior to that, Shuler was elected as the AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer in 2009, becoming the first woman to serve in the position and the youngest woman ever on the federation’s Executive Council.
Malveaux is the dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at California State Los Angeles. She has worked as an economist, author, and commentator, and is the founder of Last Word Productions. She is currently the president and founder of Economic Education in Washington, D.C. Her most recent book, Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy, was published in 2016. She is an outspoken activist for issues surrounding race, culture, gender, and their economic impacts.
Bass became the executive director of the Bauman Foundation in July 2011. In 1983, he founded OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that promotes greater government accountability and transparency and increased citizen participation in public policy decisions, and he directed it until moving to the Bauman Foundation. In addition to his role at the Bauman Foundation, Bass is an affiliated professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, where he teaches about nonprofit advocacy and social change. Bass received a combined doctorate in psychology and education from The University of Michigan.
Nina Banks is associate professor of economics and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Women’s & Gender Studies and in Africana Studies, a program that she co-developed with Carmen Gillespie. Her publications focus on social reproduction and migrant households, black women and work, and the economics of the first black economist in the U.S.—Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander. Professor Banks teaches courses on U.S. women’s economic history, gender and migration, and poverty in the U.S., and she is the inaugural director of the Bucknell-in-Ghana study abroad program.
Thomas M. Conway was elected by the International Executive Board to succeed retiring International President Leo Gerard as leader of the United Steelworkers (USW), the largest industrial union in North America, effective July 15, 2019. Previously, Conway served as International Vice President (Administration), a position he held since March 1, 2005. Conway was re-elected four times, most recently in November 2017.
Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán is a professor at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is also a professor in the Ph.D. programs in sociology and in urban education at the CUNY Graduate School and University Center. Prior to joining the School of Public Affairs at CUNY, Cordero-Guzmán was a program officer in the Economic Development and the Quality Employment units of the Asset Building and Community Development Program at the Ford Foundation.
Cortés is the national co-director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a nonprofit organization founded in Chicago by the late Saul Alinsky. Cortés’ affiliation with the IAF officially began in 1972 when he attended the organization’s organizer training institute in Chicago. In the following years Cortés founded community-based organizations in cities throughout Texas and the southwest that are now called the Southwest IAF Network. Cortés has received numerous awards and fellowships for his work, including most recently the H. J. Heinz Award for Public Policy and an appointment as a Martin Luther King Visiting Professor at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Keith Ellison was sworn in as Minnesota’s 30th attorney general on January 7, 2019. From 2007 to 2019, he represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he championed consumer, worker, environmental, and civil- and human-rights protections for Minnesotans. He served for 12 years on the House Financial Services Committee, where he helped oversee the financial services industry, the housing industry, and Wall Street, among others. Before being elected to Congress, Attorney General Ellison served four years in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Prior to entering elective office, he spent 16 years as an attorney specializing in civil rights and defense law. Ellison received his law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1990.
As the founding president of EPI in 1986, Faux has been credited with making EPI the country’s leading think tank on the political and economic issues faced by American workers. He has also worked as an economist for the departments of State, Labor, and Commerce. (EPI publications by Jeff Faux.)
Jose Garza is the Executive Director of the Workers Defense Project. He is a San Antonio, Texas native who has spent his career fighting for working people, lifting up low-income communities, and protecting immigrants. He began his career practicing law on the border, first as an assistant public defender at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc. and later as an assistant federal public defender in the Western District of Texas.
Ghilarducci is a labor economist and nationally recognized expert in retirement security. She serves as the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Chair of Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research and director of the Retirement Equity Lab (ReLab). Her 2015 book, How to Retire With Enough Money: And How To Know What is Enough, provides a commonsense blueprint to successfully save for retirement. Ghilarducci’s 2008 book, When I’m Sixty-Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, investigates the effect of pension losses on older Americans and proposes necessary reforms to ensure retirement security. (EPI publications by Teresa Ghilarducci.)
Elise Gould, elected union representative to the board, is one of the longest continuously active members of the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union. During her tenure with the union, she has regularly provided technical assistance to unit leadership and the bargaining team and has served on various committees including several hiring committees, setting racial equity standards in the workplace, and the workplace design team for the office move. As a senior economist, Gould’s research centers on the labor market, including work on employment, wages, race and gender disparities, and economic inequality. She holds a Masters of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. (EPI publications by Elise Gould.)
Hacker is the director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He is also a board member of The Century Foundation and The American Prospect, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network steering committee, and a former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. An expert on the politics of U.S. health and social policy, he is author of several books about economic insecurity and the need for health care reform, including Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
Chief Economist Susan Helper is on leave from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, where she is the Frank Tracy Carlton Professor of Economics. She was formerly the chair of the Economics Department, and has been a visiting scholar at University of Oxford, the University of California (Berkeley), Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research focuses on the globalization of supply chains, and on how U.S. manufacturing might be revitalized.
Mary Kay Henry is international president of Service Employees International Union, where she has worked since 1979. She was elected to the SEIU International Executive Board in 1996. After her election as an SEIU international executive vice president in 2004, she led efforts to build a stronger voice for health care workers.
Johnson is president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a senior fellow and director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York. He recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform. Previously he served as managing director at Soros Fund Management and Bankers Trust Company, and as chief economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and senior economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.
Kuttner is the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect and a professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. He is also a co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute. In 1996 he was the winner of the Paul Hoffman Award for Human Development of the United Nations, for his work on the relationship of economic efficiency to social equality. He is the author of 12 books, most recently: Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? (2018) and The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy (2019). He regularly writes on political and economic issues. (EPI publications by Robert Kuttner.)
Liebman is serving as a visiting distinguished scholar, 2015–16, at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations. She served as chair of the National Labor Relations Board from January 2009 to August 2011. She was first appointed to the NLRB by President Bill Clinton and was reappointed by President Bush. Before joining the NLRB, Liebman served as deputy director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). Prior positions include labor counsel for the Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen, legal counsel to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and staff attorney with the NLRB.
Lisa M. Lynch is Provost and the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Lynch served as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor from 1995 to 1997 and has been a faculty member at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the Sloan School of Management at MIT, Ohio State University, and the University of Bristol. She has published extensively on how young adults transition from school to work, the returns to public and private investments in training in the United States and in other countries, and the role of organizational innovation for productivity and wages.
Robert Martinez, Jr. currently serves as the International President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). Previous to his installment as International President, Martinez served as IAM Headquarters General Vice President (GVP) with responsibility for IAM Headquarters and the William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center. A United States Navy veteran, Martinez began his IAM career in 1980 as a member of Local 776A in Fort Worth, Texas, after being hired as an Aircraft Assembler at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth Division.
Ness is the president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. Before assuming her current role, she served as executive vice president for 13 years. Ness has played a leading role in positioning the organization as a powerful and effective advocate for today’s women and families, and she serves on the boards of some of the most influential organizations working to improve health care. Previously, Ness worked in numerous capacities at the Service Employees International Union and the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Pastor is a professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, where he directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). Pastor has co-authored many books, including his latest volume with Chris Benner, Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America’s Metro Areas (UC Press 2015). Pastor is the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC and was awarded the Wally Marks Changemaker of the Year in 2012 from the Liberty Hill Foundation in recognition of his many research partnerships with social justice organizations.
Lori Pelletier resigned her position as Connecticut AFL-CIO President on November 30, 2018, to become Vice President and Executive Director with American Income Life. American Income Life (AIL) has served working class families since 1951 with life, accident, and supplemental health products to help protect members of labor unions, credit unions, associations, and their families. Pelletier’s role as Vice President with AIL will be to work with the country’s most prominent labor organizations and leaders to provide insurance options to their affiliates and members.
Perez currently serves as chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Prior to chairing the DNC, Perez served as the 26th U.S. Secretary of Labor, fighting to protect and expand opportunities for America’s working people—from better wages and overtime pay to retirement security and collective bargaining rights.
NEA president Becky Pringle is a fierce social justice warrior, defender of educator rights, an unrelenting advocate for all students and communities of color, and a valued and respected voice in the education arena. A middle school science teacher with 31 years of classroom experience, Becky is singularly focused on using her intellect, passion, and purpose to unite the members of the largest labor union with the entire nation and using that collective power to fulfill the promise of public education.
Saunders is president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, which represents 1.6 million members. Previously he served as secretary-treasurer. Saunders began his career with AFSCME in 1978 as a labor economist. He has served in the capacities of assistant director of research and collective bargaining services, director of community action, deputy director of organizing and field services, and executive assistant to the international president.
Christopher M. Shelton currently serves as the president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Previously, Shelton was vice president of CWA District 1, representing 160,000 members in more than 300 CWA locals in New Jersey, New York, and New England. Shelton started his union career when he went to work for New York Telephone in 1968 as an outside technician. He was elected a CWA Local 1101 shop steward in 1968 and served Local 1101 in various positions until December 1988 when he joined the CWA national staff.
Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.6-million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, which represents teachers; paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; higher education faculty and staff; nurses and other healthcare professionals; local, state, and federal employees; and early childhood educators. Prior to her election as AFT president in 2008, Weingarten served for 12 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2.

Executive Committee Members

References

  1. ↑ http://www.epi.org/pages/about_the_economic_policy_institute/
  2. ↑ The policies that will determine whether Trump’s labor secretary pick supports workers (accessed November 26, 2024)
  3. ↑ Archive Link: The policies that will determine whether Trump’s labor secretary pick supports workers (accessed November 26, 2024)
  4. ↑ Steering Committee (accessed August 6, 2022)
  5. ↑ About (accessed November 21, 2021)
  6. ↑ ProsperUS Praises House Passage of Build Back Better Bill, Calls for Speedy Senate Passage, No Additional Cuts (accessed November 21, 2021)
  7. ↑ ProsperUS Urges Swift Passage of Build Back Better Act (accessed November 21, 2021)
  8. ↑ ProsperUS Coalition: Historic Build Back Better Deal Clear Rejection of Trickle-Down Economics, Big Win for Workers, Families, and Economy (accessed November 21, 2021)
  9. ↑ https://www.epi.org/open-letter-from-nobel-laureates-in-support-of-economic-recovery-agenda/ Open letter from Nobel Laureates in support of economic recovery agenda (accessed November 1, 2021)
  10. ↑ http://www.epi.org/pages/about_the_economic_policy_institute/
  11. ↑ EPI board, accessed September 2011
  12. ↑ A Progressive Approach to Marginal Taxes in the News (accessed June 26, 2024)
  13. ↑ Tax the Hell Out of the Rich, When They’re Alive and When They’re Dead (accessed June 26, 2024)
  14. ↑ [1] EPI website, accessed May 7, 2010
  15. ↑ EPI staff page, accessed September 2011
  16. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20211026100612/https://www.epi.org/about/board/ Board of Directors (accessed November 2, 2021)
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