Workers need more power. Families need more stability.
CSLI works to strengthen worker power, raise job standards, and build more security for working families.
Too many people work hard and still live one missed paycheck, one surprise bill, or one bad schedule away from crisis. We advance practical labor standards that give workers more power over the rules that shape their lives.
Weeks of wages needed annually for a household's basic needs.1
Middle-class income shifted to the top 10% since 1975.2
Private sector union density today, down from 48% of eligible workers in 1946.3
Less than one-third of American households are considered financially healthy.4
1. American Compass Cost-of-Thriving Index 2. RAND, Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2024; 3. BLS, Union Members - 2025; BLS Statistics Bulletin #916, p133; 4. Financial Health Network
We help states build durable labor standards that strengthen worker power.
CSLI supports practical state-level strategies that improve job quality and help working families build more stable lives.
Raise job quality
We advance approaches that give workers a meaningful role in shaping wages, benefits, scheduling, safety, training, and other job standards.
Support state action
We help state leaders and partners design policies and experiments that raise standards across industries and occupations.
Strengthen working families
CSLI supports practical state-level strategies that raise labor standards, improve job quality, and strengthen the economic security of working families.
Our publication: Labor Innovation
Private enterprise never ceases to innovate, never rests. And as wealth compounds, so does power. Yet, most hard-working Americans remain powerless over their own economic futures, stuck at the mercy of powerful corporations and century-old labor laws. And as essential as unions and collective bargaining remain for those lucky enough to benefit from them, today they serve only a tiny and shrinking share of the private-sector workforce.
Labor Innovation will challenge this status quo by exploring new ways to raise economic standards and build worker power, while also creating more stable labor markets, clearer standards, and fairer competition for responsible businesses. Our policy approaches include state-based, sectoral co-regulation that brings workers, business leaders, and government together across ideological and political lines.
Our north star is a thriving, secure, stable American middle class that anyone can join through hard work, enabled by worker organizations that are powerful, sustainable, and scalable, and by businesses that succeed based on serving their customers and treating their workforce as their most vital asset. This effort needs new ideas and new voices. Join us.
Help build worker power in the states.
CSLI works with leaders and partners ready to strengthen labor standards, support working families, and give more workers a voice in the rules that govern their work.
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