Georgetown Law is working to launch its new Workers’ Rights Institute, with hopes of opening this fall, and has tapped former National Labor Relations Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce as the institute’s executive director. With new labor challenges arising all the time, Pearce said the institute has a wealth of challenges to explore, particularly with regard to the nation’s “most vulnerable” workers.

“It’s a diverse community of workers that we hope to embrace. We have low-income workers, particularly workers of color, single mothers, LGBT individuals, immigrant workers and the like,” Pearce said. “We want to provide training and education so that these workers will feel more comfortable with the rights they already have while we at the same time would want to engage in policy initiatives that would improve upon those rights.”