His research focuses on new structures for labor-management relationships in the United States, and his work argues the need for a more cooperative system. He is an expert on labor relations in the automobile and telecommunications industries both in the U.S. and abroad, and is often invited to lecture about those industries and about current labor-management relationships in general.
Katz is the author of several books, including ''Shifting Gears: Changing Labor Relations in the U.S. Automobile Industry'', ''The Transformation of American Industrial Relations'', ''Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems'', and the widely used textbook ''An Introduction to Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations''.
In 2012, Katz was named a Scholar Fellow by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. He is the current president of the International Labor and Employment Relations Association