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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Three Employment Policy Crises: Jobs, Wages and Public-Sector Collective Bargaining | Business Wire

Three Employment Policy Crises: Jobs, Wages and Public-Sector Collective Bargaining | Business Wire

Three Employment Policy Crises: Jobs, Wages and Public-Sector Collective Bargaining

National Policy Briefing to Bring These Issues to Top of Nation’s Agenda

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The nation is experiencing its greatest employment crisis since the Great Depression, yet national policy makers hold widely divergent views about jobs, wages and now public-sector collective bargaining.

Prominent economic and employment experts will discuss the latest research and findings to inform policymakers on:

  • unemployment and job growth,
  • wage stagnation and the need for a new social contract, and
  • the future of public-sector collective bargaining and pension reforms.

The 9 a.m. to noon Monday (June 6) briefing is hosted by the Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN) in partnership with the Labor and Employment Relations Association(LERA) National Policy Forum on June 6-7 at the Cafritz Conference Center, Elliott Room (310) at George Washington University 800 21st St. N.W. Washington, D.C., 20052.

Also sponsoring the briefing are the New America Foundation, the Economic Policy Institute, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Center for American Progress and theUpjohn Institute for Employment Research.

EPRN was created with startup support from the Rockefeller and Russell Sage foundations to bring more evidence-based research and analytical focus into debates on critical work and employment policy issues. It is a network of more than 125 researchers from 50 major U.S. universities. In-depth EPRN research-policy briefings on unemployment, wage stagnation and public-sector collective bargaining are available at the EPRN web site.

Chairing the briefing session is Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Thomas A. Kochan, a Sloan School of Management professor. He will summarize