Employers increasingly telling workers how to vote
GOP candidate Romney
encourages workplace
electioneering by owners
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Three years after the U.S. Supreme
Court’s Citizens United decision
opened the floodgates to money in pol-
itics, corporations are flexing their
“free speech” like never before. As the
election nears, more and more compa-
nies are breaking away from tradition
and propriety to tell workers how to
vote. That practice was illegal just three
years ago: Under the Federal Election
Campaign Act of 1971, corporations
were prohibited from advocating for
specific candidates to rank-and-file em-
ployees. But that was swept away by
the Supreme Court, along with restric-
tions on “independent expenditures.”
Now companies around the country
are telling workers which candidates
they prefer. Leading the way is Koch
Industries, a conglomerate owned by
billionaire Republican funders David
and Charles Koch. Koch Industries
owns Georgia-Pacific, and even in
2010, distributed guides urging work-
ers to vote for certain candidates. This
year, as reported online by the maga-
zine In These Times, Koch again
mailed ballot guides to all 45,000
Georgia-Pacific employees.
“If we elect candidates who want to
spend hundreds of billions in borrowed
money on costly new subsidies for a
few favored cronies, put unprecedented
regulatory burdens on businesses, pre-
vent or delay important new construc-
tion projects and excessively hinder
free trade, then many of our 50,000
U.S. employees and contractors may
suffer the consequences, including
higher gasoline prices, runaway infla-
tion and other ills,” writes company
president Dave Robertson in a cover
letter accompanying the guides. Boiled
down to basics, it’s billionaires telling
workers, “Don’t vote for Democrats.”
In Oregon, for example, only Re-
publican candidates have the Koch en-
dorsement.
And other employers are following
the Kochs’ example:
• David Siegel — a billionaire time-
share developer who’s trying to build
himself America’s biggest house —
told all 8,000 employees in an Oct. 8 e-
mail, “The economy doesn’t currently
pose a threat to your job. What does
threaten your job, however, is another
four years of the same presidential ad-
ministration …. If any new taxes are
levied on me, or my company, as our
current president plans, I will have no
choice but to reduce the size of this
company. Rather than grow this com-
pany, I will be forced to cut back. This
means fewer jobs, less benefits and cer-
tainly less opportunity for everyone.”
• In a memo to 2,300 employees an-
nouncing a bonus, the CEO of a Michi-
gan auto parts supplier included this
note: “Talk of additional tax increases
by the administration, if re-elected, will
have an additional negative impact on
the organization … It is always impor-
tant to remember the more government
takes, the less there will be available to
spread around to the working people of
this company.”
Never mind that the company bene-
fitted from the auto bailout; his and
Siegel’s statements aren’t even true:
The federal government doesn’t tax
companies before they pay workers; it
taxes profit, which is what’s left after
workers and others are paid.
But the important thing about the
newly-permitted electioneering is the
effect it has on employees, and democ-
racy, says Gordon Lafer, associate pro-
fessor at the University of Oregon's La-
bor Education and Research Center.
“This is one of the things we criti-
cize and deem illegitimate in other
countries,” Lafer said. In 2002 and
2004, the Bush-era State Department
questioned the legitimacy of Ukraine’s
presidential election after universities
and other state-owned enterprises told
people who to vote for. And an Armen-
ian election in 2003 was called into
question after factory and other em-
ployees were forced to attend rallies of
the ruling party.
Now, those practices are coming
home. Workers at a Beallsville,
Ohio, coal mine owned by big-time
Republican donor Bob Murray were
told that attendance at an Aug. 14 cam-
paign rally for Mitt Romney was both
mandatory and unpaid.
Romney may not have known the
miners were made to attend, but he has
encouraged business owners to propa-
gandize workers, saying in a June con-
ference call to the National Federation
of Independent Business: “I hope you
make it very clear to your employees
what you believe is in the best interest
of your enterprise and therefore their
job and their future in the upcoming
elections. And whether you agree with
me or you agree with President Obama,
or whatever your political view, I hope
you pass those along to your employ-
ees. [There’s] nothing illegal about you
talking with your employees about
what you believe is best for the busi-
ness, because I think that will figure in
to their election decision, their voting
decision.”
Defenders have asked: If unions
may make election recommendations
to workers, why shouldn’t employers
have that right? But longtime cam-
paign finance reform activist Janice
Thompson, former director of Com-
mon Cause Oregon, says there are cru-
cial differences: “Unions have a demo-
cratic process to make their
endorsements,” Thompson said, “and
they don’t have any ability to coerce.”
Employers may say their speech is
not coercive, Lafer says, but it can still
have a chilling effect on workers:
“Even if there’s a secret ballot, when
you tell employees who you want them
to vote for, it scares everybody into not
having a bumper sticker or wearing a
button or being photographed at a
rally.”
“These are the same tactics employ-
ers use against workers trying to organ-
ize,” said AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka in a press statement. “The
Supreme Court has long recognized
that even what appears on its face to be
mere persuasion becomes inherently
coercive when it’s an employer urging
its employees to take particular ac-
tions.”
Low Prices!
Mon-Fri 9-6, Sat 9:30-5:30, Sun 12-6
(International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X)
Established in 1900 at Portland, Oregon
as a voice of the labor movement.
4275 NE Halsey St., P.O. Box 13150,
Portland, Ore. 97213
Telephone: (503) 288-3311
Editor: Michael Gutwig
Staff: Don McIntosh, Cheri Rice
Published on a semi-monthly basis on the first and third Fridays of
each month by the Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc., a non-
profit corporation owned by 20 unions and councils including the
Oregon AFL-CIO. Serving more than 120 union organizations in Ore-
gon and SW Washington. Subscriptions $13.75 per year for union
members.
Group rates available to trade union organizations.
PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID
AT PORTLAND, OREGON.
CHANGE OF ADDRESS NOTICE: Three weeks are required for a
change of address. When ordering a change, please give your old
and new addresses and the name and number of your local union.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS, P.O. BOX 13150,
PORTLAND, OR 97213-0150
NOVEMBER 2, 2012
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PAGE 3