Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists

Hertel-Fernandez, a Columbia professor of international and public affairs, provides an eye-opening and timely look at the increased role of private-sector employers in American politics. He instantly demands attention with examples of employer behavior that is currently legal—for instance, requiring subordinates to volunteer for political campaigns as a condition of employment. There are also less-overt, but nonetheless still coercive, practices, as when paper manufacturer Georgia Pacific distributed a list of candidates it supported in national and local elections accompanied by the warning that their defeat could trigger negative consequences for employees. These examples are supported with chilling details, such as “employer messages... [that] reduce worker support for the minimum wage.” Hertel-Fernandez traces the history of these practices back to the 1896 presidential campaign pitting the probusiness William McKinley against the populist William Jennings Bryan, in which managers told their workers that staying in business hinged on McKinley’s election. He offers cogent legislative reforms to protect workers from political coercion by their bosses, in the hope that these reforms can “remedy one important and growing symptom of the troubled relationship between democracy and corporate capitalism.” Hertel-Fernandez has performed a great public service with this accessible and rigorously documented study.[em] (Mar.) [/em]