State Impact Day Highlights Outreach Research
From AI in the workplace to ILR’s data-driven digital tools that help both policymakers and individuals make decisions, ILR State Impact Day highlighted the school’s Outreach expertise.
“We are very proud of the work that we do at the ILR School to address a range of work- and employment-related policy challenges in New York state,” said Ariel Avgar, Ph.D. ’08, ILR’s David M. Cohen ’73 Professor of Labor Relations, senior associate dean for Outreach and Sponsored Research and director of the Center for Applied Research on Work.
“We could not do this work without support from the state, and we are excited about opportunities like this to come together to reflect on the impact we are already having and the work that still needs to be done to advance equitable employment opportunities and working conditions in New York,” he said.
The day-long Sept. 27 meeting in King-Shaw Hall at ILR drew state legislative staffers and representatives of the governor’s office and the state Department of Labor. It included presentations from ILR Outreach faculty based in New York City, Ithaca and Buffalo.
Esta Bigler, director of ILR’s Labor and Employment Law Program, told the group that if employers use AI, it should be transparent. “AI is making employment decisions every day. People don’t even know AI is in use. Nobody knows what’s in the black box being used to make employment decisions. How do we begin to regulate this? Is AI better than me or you in making an employment decision? Is it less likely to discriminate?”
Members of ILR’s Buffalo Co-Lab team covered the issue of affordable child care. Forty-two percent of New Yorkers surveyed by the ILR School said they decided to forego work outside the home due to child care factors such as cost and accessibility, and 79% of ILR’s Empire State Poll respondents support public funding for universal child care, said Co-Lab Director Cathy Creighton.
Russell Weaver, Co-Lab research director, said, “The number one thing we hear from partners is that they need our research and data to advocate for policy changes in our state. Part of our mission has been to synthesize data sets and create digital tools that allow our partners to get answers to their questions with just a few clicks,” he said. For instance, the Cornell ILR Wage Atlas collects six tools that integrate U.S. Census Bureau, New York State Department of Labor and MIT Living Wage Calculator data.
Patricia Campos-Medina, Worker Institute executive director, said that about 10% of New York state residents are part of the gig economy, but many need health, safety and other protections. “The work we do is to explain what the law says, what can be done to support workers’ rights and economic justice.”
“We at the Worker Institute have this unique ability and role – we work with labor leaders in the formal labor movement to help them try to understand what’s happening in the economy, what’s happened to workers, and to understand what are the innovations and the new policy that need to happen so that we grow.”
The Outreach team discussed supporting innovation in the care economy, creating opportunities for justice-impacted people and people with disabilities, clean energy jobs and other topics, many of which are covered in the New York at Work report published in August.