think-tank liberal labor economic-policy minimum-wage pro-act nlrb revolving-door
related: AFL-CIO · SEIU · American Federation of Teachers · National Education Association · Ford Foundation · Bill Gates
Who They Are
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank founded in 1986 and headquartered at 1225 I Street NW, Washington, D.C. It is the labor movement’s primary research institution — funded by unions, chaired by the AFL-CIO president, and staffed by economists who rotate between EPI and Democratic administrations. EPI describes its mission as bringing “the needs of low- and middle-income workers” into economic policy debates.
Founded by: Jeff Faux, Lester Thurow, Ray Marshall, Barry Bluestone, Robert Reich, and Robert Kuttner — economists with ties to labor unions and Democratic administrations who wanted a counterweight to the free-market research infrastructure being built by Heritage Foundation and Cato in the 1980s.
Structure: EPI is the 501(c)(3) research arm. EPI Action is a companion 501(c)(4) that conducts explicit advocacy and is not required to disclose donors. The two entities share staff and leadership under the same organizational umbrella.
Scale (IRS 990 data):
- FY 2024: Revenue $11.9M · Expenses $13.6M · Total Assets $19.6M
- FY 2023: Revenue $16.2M · Expenses $12.1M · Net Income $4.0M
- FY 2022: Revenue $8.1M · Expenses $12.2M
- FY 2021: Revenue $16.5M · Expenses $10.4M
Current leadership:
- Heidi Shierholz — President (since 2021); former Obama DOL Chief Economist
- Elizabeth H. Shuler — Board Chair; AFL-CIO President
- Naomi Walker — Vice President; salary $220,755 (FY 2024)
- Josh Bivens — Chief Economist / Director of Research
Staff size: Approximately 40–50 employees based on compensation data in 990 filings.
Who Funds Them
EPI discloses funding tiers annually on its website. The structural picture is clear: foundations provide the majority of funding, with organized labor as the second-largest source.
2021 funding breakdown (self-disclosed):
- Foundations: 79%
- Labor Unions: 14%
- Corporations/Organizations: 2%
- Individuals: 3%
- Other: 2%
Top donors by tier (2021 acknowledgment list):
$200,000 and above:
American Federation of Teachers · Bauman Foundation · Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust · Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation · Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund · Ford Foundation · National Education Association · New Venture Fund (The Hub) · Omidyar Network · Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · Silicon Valley Foundation · Surdna Foundation · Topos Partnership · W.K. Kellogg Foundation · William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
$100,000–$199,999:
AFL-CIO · AFSCME · International Brotherhood of Teamsters · Kresge Foundation · Marguerite Casey Foundation · Service Employees International Union · United Auto Workers · United Food & Commercial Workers International Union · United Steelworkers
$50,000–$99,999:
Coydog Foundation · Peter G. Peterson Foundation · Present Progressive Fund · United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners
$10,000–$49,999:
Amalgamated Transit Union · American Income Life · Communications Workers of America · International Association of Machinists · International Brotherhood of Boilermakers · International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers · National Association of Letter Carriers · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors · UNITE HERE · Oxfam · Steel Dynamics Inc.
Money
EPI’s founding was itself a union investment: eight labor unions made a five-year funding pledge at inception — AFSCME, UAW, United Steelworkers, United Mine Workers, IAM, Communications Workers of America, SEIU, and UFCW. The organization was built from day one as labor’s research arm. By 2021, AFL-CIO president Elizabeth Shuler chaired the board, UAW and SEIU remained top funders at $100K+, and every union federation with significant political clout had money in EPI. The “independent research” brand is accurate in that EPI researchers write what they believe — but the institutional structure ensures they believe what their funders need them to believe.
Notable anomalies:
- Peter G. Peterson Foundation ($50K–$99K): Peterson was a deficit hawk whose foundation spent billions arguing that Social Security and Medicare spending must be cut. EPI’s own research consistently opposes entitlement cuts. This funder relationship has not been publicly explained.
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($200K+): Microsoft historically engaged in aggressive union avoidance. The Gates Foundation is the largest private education funder, with a reform agenda (charter schools, high-stakes testing) that teacher unions — also EPI funders — oppose.
- Tobacco Institute (1980s, historical): EPI accepted money from the Tobacco Institute to oppose excise taxes on tobacco. This early episode of funder-directed research is documented in academic literature on tobacco industry strategy.
What They Produce
EPI’s output is primarily economic research framed as policy advocacy. Its flagship products:
State of Working America — Biennial data publication tracking wages, income, wealth, poverty, and inequality since 1988. The standard citation in Congressional testimony on labor economics. Tracks the productivity-pay gap, CEO pay ratios, union density, and real wage trends across the income distribution.
PRO Act research series — Multiple papers advocating the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, documenting employer interference in union elections, and modeling the economic effects of higher unionization rates. EPI’s research that employers violate labor law in 41.5% of union election campaigns became a key data point in PRO Act advocacy.
Minimum wage modeling — EPI’s $15 minimum wage research (“32 million workers”) was cited extensively in Congressional debate over the Raise the Wage Act. EPI maintains ongoing minimum wage modeling tools showing state-by-state and demographic impacts.
NLRB policy analysis — Real-time tracking of NLRB board decisions, rule changes, and enforcement trends. EPI’s 2023 report on Biden’s NLRB appointees documented specific rule reversals and their worker impact. Functioned as the policy template for what labor wanted from Biden’s board picks.
Overtime rule analysis — EPI’s research supported Biden DOL’s 2024 expansion of overtime eligibility, estimating the rule would cover 4+ million additional workers.
CEO pay ratio reports — Annual publication tracking CEO-to-worker pay ratios. EPI’s finding that CEOs earned 351 times the average worker in 2020 is the most-cited figure on executive compensation inequality.
Trump 2.0 anti-worker documentation series (2025–):
When Trump’s second administration moved to systematically dismantle labor protections beginning in January 2025, EPI shifted a significant portion of its output to real-time damage documentation — functioning as a running audit of the most comprehensive attack on U.S. labor rights in modern history.
Key publications and ongoing trackers:
- “Unprecedented: The Trump NLRB’s attack on workers’ rights” (2025) — Documented the Trump NLRB’s five simultaneous rulemakings, all weakening workers’ organizing rights; firing of NLRB board members without precedent (the first such firings in the agency’s history), leaving the board without a quorum and halting case adjudication; and the resulting constitutional challenge declaring NLRB’s structure unconstitutional. The NLRB is, per EPI, “hanging by a thread.”
- “Trump is the biggest union-buster in U.S. history” (2025) — Documented Trump’s March and August 2025 executive orders stripping federal employee unions of collective bargaining rights, affecting 1+ million workers; nine federal agencies canceled their union contracts as a result.
- “50 Reasons the Trump Administration Is Bad for Workers” (2025) — Comprehensive enumeration of anti-worker executive actions, regulatory rollbacks, and agency dismantlements in Trump’s second term.
- Federal Policy Watch — Real-time tracking tool monitoring Trump administration policy changes to worker protections, updated weekly by EPI economists.
Contradiction
EPI’s core policy victories — Biden NLRB reforms, overtime expansion, minimum wage modeling — are being systematically reversed in Trump’s second term. The NLRB that EPI’s research helped rebuild is now being structurally dismantled. This pattern exposes the structural limit of the liberal think tank model: policy gains achieved through regulatory action can be reversed by executive action faster than research can counter them. EPI can document the destruction; it cannot prevent it.
The Policy Pipeline
EPI’s research-to-policy pathway is unusually direct because its former staff occupy key regulatory positions:
Step 1: EPI publishes research documenting a labor market problem (wage suppression, union election interference, inadequate overtime coverage).
Step 2: EPI Action advocates for specific legislative or regulatory fixes, citing EPI research as the empirical foundation.
Step 3: A Democratic administration appoints EPI-connected economists to the relevant agency (DOL, NLRB, CEA).
Step 4: The agency implements the policy EPI researched and advocated.
Step 5: EPI publishes analysis of the policy’s impact, generating evidence base for future advocacy.
The minimum wage, overtime, and NLRB pipelines all follow this structure. EPI does not draft model legislation the way ALEC does — it shapes the economic consensus that makes legislation politically viable.
Congressional citation pattern: EPI economists testify before Congress regularly. Josh Bivens, Heidi Shierholz, and Lawrence Mishel have appeared in dozens of hearings on minimum wage, overtime, trade, and inequality. Their research appears in Democratic members’ floor statements, committee reports, and press releases.
The Revolving Door
EPI’s staff movement between the think tank and Democratic administrations is the clearest evidence of its institutional function: it is a parking lot for labor-aligned economists between Democratic administrations and a training ground for future regulators.
Key documented movements:
| Name | EPI Role | Government Role | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heidi Shierholz | Economist (2007–2014); Policy Dir. (2017–); President (2021–) | Obama DOL Chief Economist (2014–2017) | EPI → DOL → EPI → EPI |
| Thea Lee | President (2017–2021) | Biden DOL Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs (2021–) | EPI → DOL |
| Ross Eisenbrey | Vice President (~2010–2017) | Obama administration DOL advisor | EPI → Gov |
| Thomas Perez | EPI Board Member (2022) | Obama DOL Secretary (2013–2017); DNC Chair (2017–2021) | Gov → EPI Board |
| Keith Ellison | EPI Board Member (2017–2023) | U.S. Representative (2007–2019); MN Attorney General (2019–) | Gov ↔ EPI Board |
| Robert Reich | EPI co-founder | Clinton DOL Secretary (1993–1997) | Gov ↔ EPI |
AFL-CIO governance lock: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka chaired EPI’s board from at least 2013 until his death in August 2021. Current AFL-CIO President Elizabeth Shuler assumed the chair position. This means the head of the largest union federation in the United States directly governs EPI — not as a funder, but as the board’s top officer.
Contradiction
EPI presents itself as an independent research organization whose conclusions follow from data. But the board chair is the AFL-CIO president, the top funders are AFL-CIO affiliated unions, the president is a former Obama DOL official, and the immediate past president went directly to a Biden DOL position. This is not independence — it is the labor movement’s in-house economics department operating under an academic branding. That does not make the research wrong, but it means the “independent” framing should be understood as a legitimacy strategy, not a description of the institution’s actual position.
Donation-to-Policy Timeline
| Date | Recipient/Target | Amount | Policy Return | Time Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | EPI founding — 8 union pledge | Multi-year | Created labor-aligned counter-research infrastructure vs. Heritage/Cato | Ongoing |
| 2014 | Heidi Shierholz joins Obama DOL after 7 years at EPI | Staff (not $) | EPI overtime research → Obama 2016 overtime rule expansion to 4.2M workers | 7 years |
| 2019–2021 | AFL-CIO, SEIU, UAW ($100K+ each) | $300K+ combined | EPI PRO Act research formed basis of Biden NLRB reform agenda | 2–3 years |
| 2021 | Thea Lee departs EPI for Biden DOL | Staff (not $) | EPI trade research → Biden trade enforcement focus under ILAB | Immediate |
| 2021 | AFL-CIO, NEA, AFT ($200K–$500K+) | $500K+ combined | EPI minimum wage modeling cited in Senate $15 floor debates | Ongoing |
| 2021 | EPI NLRB research → Biden board appointments | Research output | Biden NLRB reversed Trump-era rules on graduate student unions, independent contractors, card-check | 2 years |
| 2022 | EPI overtime rule modeling published | Research output | Biden DOL proposed overtime expansion covering 3.6M workers (finalized 2024) | 2 years |
| 2024 | AFL-CIO chair (Shuler) governs EPI board | Governance | EPI policy output aligned with AFL-CIO priorities — PRO Act, card check, joint employer | Ongoing |
| 2025 | Trump fires NLRB board members (first in agency history) | $0 (counter-research) | EPI “Unprecedented” report documents quorum loss, 5 simultaneous anti-worker rulemakings, constitutional challenge; structural gains from Biden NLRB reversed | Immediate — EPI research cannot stop executive action |
| 2025 | Trump EOs strip 1M+ federal workers’ union rights | $0 (counter-research) | EPI “Biggest union-buster” report documents 9 agencies canceling union contracts; Federal Policy Watch tracks rollbacks in real time | Simultaneous — documentation without policy leverage |
Money
The AFL-CIO’s structural position at EPI is not a donation relationship — it is a governance relationship. The federation president chairs the board that hires the president, sets institutional direction, and approves major research priorities. The $100K+ annual donation is almost beside the point: the AFL-CIO doesn’t just fund EPI’s research, it governs the institution that produces the research it will then cite in legislative fights. The return on that investment is a legitimized, peer-reviewed empirical foundation for labor’s policy agenda — research that Democratic politicians can cite as “independent economic analysis” rather than union lobbying.
What Their Funders Got
AFL-CIO / affiliated unions:
- Obama overtime rule (2016): EPI research provided the economic case; Shierholz was inside DOL when the rule was drafted
- Biden NLRB reforms: Multiple Trump-era NLRB rules reversed; EPI research provided the documentation of harm
- Biden overtime rule (2024): EPI modeling cited in rulemaking; rule extended overtime to 4+ million additional workers (later struck down by court)
- Sustained congressional attention to wage stagnation and inequality: EPI’s CEO pay ratio and productivity-pay gap data are the standard citations in Democratic speeches on economic inequality
National Education Association / American Federation of Teachers:
- EPI research consistently documents the economic value of teacher pay and union contracts
- EPI analysis of public sector union legislation used to oppose state-level right-to-work expansion
- EPI research on early childhood education policy aligned with NEA/AFT positions on pre-K funding
Ford Foundation / major foundations:
- EPI research on inequality, minimum wage, and labor standards supports the “inclusive economy” framework foundations fund across multiple organizations
- Policy alignment is structural — EPI’s outputs are consistent with the center-left economic reform framework that major Democratic foundations fund
Class Analysis
EPI occupies a specific and structurally important position in the American political economy: it is the labor movement’s research legitimacy machine.
The conservative think tank model converts corporate and billionaire money into “independent research” that supports deregulation, tax cuts, and union suppression. EPI converts union and foundation money into “independent research” that supports labor standards, union rights, and wage policy. The structural parallel is exact — the directional difference is real.
The critical question for class analysis is not whether EPI’s research is accurate (it generally is, by the standards of mainstream labor economics) but what structural function the “independence” framing serves. When a Republican senator cites Heritage Foundation research, the funding relationship is understood. When a Democratic senator cites EPI research, it is presented as neutral economic analysis. The institutional separation between funder and researcher serves a legitimacy function that pure lobbying cannot.
EPI’s specific class function:
- Demand legitimacy for labor in policy debates — In an economic discourse dominated by corporate-funded research, EPI provides the counterweight that allows labor’s policy agenda to be framed as evidence-based rather than interest-based
- Train the next generation of labor-aligned regulators — The revolving door pattern is not incidental; it is the mechanism by which EPI’s analytical framework becomes government policy
- Maintain the empirical record of inequality — EPI’s longitudinal data on wages, CEO pay, and productivity is the factual foundation for political arguments about economic distribution
The structural limit: EPI’s work operates within the framework of capitalism and wage labor. It advocates for higher floors (minimum wage), stronger rights (union organizing), and better rules (overtime coverage) — but does not challenge the underlying property relations that allow employers to capture the surplus value of labor. This is partly a strategic choice (advocacy requires operating in the realm of the politically possible) and partly a funder constraint (no labor union or foundation funder is paying for post-capitalist economics).
The Gates/Peterson anomaly: The presence of the Gates Foundation and Peter G. Peterson Foundation in EPI’s donor list is the clearest evidence of the contradiction at the heart of labor-aligned institutions in America. The billionaire class funds the institution that argues for taxing and regulating the billionaire class — not because billionaires want those outcomes, but because they want a seat at the table when the policies are designed, and because “civic philanthropy” to labor-aligned research is a low-cost hedge against more radical alternatives.
Sources
- ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: Economic Policy Institute IRS 990 filings 2011–2024 (Tier 1)
- EPI: Funder acknowledgments and disclosure principles — 2021 donor list (Tier 3)
- Wikipedia: Economic Policy Institute — history, policy proposals, funding (Tier 3)
- Wikipedia: Heidi Shierholz — career at EPI and Obama DOL (Tier 3)
- EPI Board of Directors — current board composition (Tier 3)
- EPI: The workers’ think tank — a history of the Economic Policy Institute (Tier 3)
- EPI: State of Working America — flagship data publication (Tier 3)
- EPI: Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift pay of 32 million workers (Tier 3)
- EPI: Why workers need the PRO Act — fact sheet on labor law reform (Tier 3)
- EPI: Unlawful — employers charged with violating federal law in 41.5% of union election campaigns (Tier 2)
- EPI: The Biden board — how Biden’s NLRB appointees are restoring workers’ rights (Tier 3)
- NPR: Longtime AFL-CIO official takes up key labor post in Biden administration (Thea Lee) (Tier 2)
- Ballotpedia: Economic Policy Institute (Tier 3)
- OpenSecrets: Economic Policy Institute profile (Tier 1)
- SourceWatch: Economic Policy Institute — tobacco funding history, Tobacco Institute relationship documentation (Tier 3)
- EPI: Unprecedented — The Trump NLRB’s attack on workers’ rights (5 simultaneous rulemakings, quorum loss, constitutional challenge) (Tier 2)
- EPI: Trump is the biggest union-buster in U.S. history — 1 million federal workers’ collective bargaining rights at risk (Tier 2)
- EPI: Federal Policy Watch — real-time tracker of Trump administration changes to worker protections (Tier 3)
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