Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists

by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

Employers are increasingly recruiting their workers into politics to change elections and public policy-sometimes in coercive ways. Using a diverse array of evidence, including national surveys of workers and employers, as well as in-depth interviews with top corporate managers, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez's Politics at Work explains why mobilization of workers has become an appealing corporate political strategy in recent decades. The book also assesses the effect of employer mobilization on the political process more broadly, including its consequences for electoral contests, policy debates, and political representation.

Hertel-Fernandez shows that while employer political recruitment has some benefits for American democracy-for instance, getting more workers to the polls-it also has troubling implications for our democratic system. Workers face considerable pressure to respond to their managers' political requests because of the economic power employers possess over workers. In spite of these worrisome patterns, Hertel-Fernandez found that corporate managers view the mobilization of their own workers as an important strategy for influencing politics. As he shows, companies consider mobilization of their workers to be even more effective at changing public policy than making campaign contributions or buying electoral ads.

Hertel-Fernandez closes with an array of solutions that could protect workers from employer political coercion and could also win the support of majorities of Americans. By carefully examining a growing yet underappreciated political practice, Politics at Work contributes to our understanding of the changing workplace, as well as the increasing power of corporations in American politics. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between inequality, public policy, and American democracy.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Business

360 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2018

About the author

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez is an Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He studies the intersection of interest groups, especially business and labor, and politics in the United States.

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists by Alexander Hertel- Fernandez provides a novel analysis of the disturbing and pervasive political trend of employer mobilization that is sweeping across America. As the title suggests, this book is interested in the way that companies use emotional and financial manipulation to exert control over how workers vote and thus, transform workers into powerful political pawns. Despite instances of employer coercion affecting some of America’s earliest elections, it was not until the Citizens United 2010 Supreme Court decision that employer mobilization took flight to become a widespread, increasingly aggressive, and alarmingly legal phenomenon that typically favours republican candidates and stresses industry profit over community wellbeing.

In the dawn of Citizens United, businesses can “require their workers to participate in partisan politics in particular ways on pain of dismissal or other changes to their employment” (Fernandez, 2018, p.117), and there are little protections afforded to workers. Fernandez maintains that employer mobilization is particularly troubling because it disproportionately targets and effects lower income workers who fear that they must obey employer commands or risk losing their economic livelihood. Fernandez warns of the new technology that has been developed, which allows companies to directly contact their workers with tailored political messages and monitor employee responses, so that they can reward or punish employees based on what should be personal political choices.

While Fernandez crafts a convincing argument, he is the first to admit that this study is only the beginning. Unfortunately, as this is a new theory with very little existing research, Fernandez must almost entirely rely on primary research, such as surveys and interviews that he conducts himself and cannot engage in any thorough literature review. While he makes broad connections to existing research on civicness and employer-employee relationships, there are virtually no studies of employer mobilization for him to build upon. Despite this shortcoming, Fernandez makes some important connections between employer mobilization and democracy, more broadly. Admittedly, these important connections are relegated to the conclusion and I believe they are deserving of a more central role within the novel.