EPI’s Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages is a policy response team tracking the wage and employment policies coming out of the White House, Congress, and the courts. This watchdog unit of economists and lawyers keeps an especially close eye on the federal agencies that establish and defend workers’ rights, wages, and working conditions, including the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The Perkins Project is headed by former Labor Department Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz and is named for Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary under FDR and principal architect of the New Deal labor reforms. Inspired by Perkins’s legacy, the Perkins Project monitors, analyzes, and publicizes any attempts to dismantle the laws and regulations that protect worker rights and wages. Perkins Project reporting on this site arms activists, journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers with the facts they need to fight for working people.