Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-26T18:06:07.969Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

How Employers Recruit Their Workers into Politics—And Why Political Scientists Should Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2016

Abstract

In the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, many American private-sector employers now have the legal right to recruit their workers into politics and to fire or discipline employees who refuse to participate. How many firms and workers are engaged in this kind of political recruitment and why? And how have the opportunities for the political recruitment of workers by their employers changed over time? Drawing on national surveys of top corporate managers and workers, as well as a review of the legal literature, I provide initial answers to these questions and illustrate the implications of employer political recruitment for a range of substantive and normative issues in American politics. My findings invite further research and discussion about this feature of the American workplace and its effects on politics and policy.

Type
Reflections
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, Samuel, Iversen, Torben, and Soskice, David. 2010. “Informal Social Networks and Rational Voting.” British Journal of Political Science 41: 229–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahlquist, John, Clayton, Amanda B., and Levi, Margaret. 2014. “Provoking Preferences: Unionization, Trade Policy, and the ILWU Puzzle.” International Organization 68(1): 3375.Google Scholar
Allstate-National Journal. 2014. “Heartland Monitor Poll XXI.” FTI Consulting.Google Scholar
Banerjee, Neela. 2012. “Ohio miners say they were forced to attend Romney rally.” The Los Angeles Times.Google Scholar
Bensel, Richard Franklin. 2004. The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
BIPAC. 2006. “Prosperity Project and Prosperity Fund Report.” Washington, DC.Google Scholar
BIPAC. 2014. “ROI Report.” Washington, DC: Business-Industry Political Action Committee.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. 2004. “Businesses Point Workers Toward Ballot Boxes.” The Washington Post.Google Scholar
BLS. 2016. “Table 1. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by selected characteristics.” Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics Economic News Release.Google Scholar
Brady, Henry E., Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and Verba, Sidney. 1999. “Prospecting for Participants: Rational Expectations and the Recruitment of Political Activists.” American Political Science Review 93(1): 153–68.Google Scholar
Bronfenbrenner, Kate. 2009. “No Holds Barred, The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organzing.” Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.Google Scholar
Clawson, Dan, Neustadtl, Alan, and Weller, Mark. 1998. Dollars and Votes. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission . 558 U.S. 310 (2010).Google Scholar
Congressional Record. 1976. “Congressional Record - Senate, March 16, 1976.” Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Conlin, Michelle and Lozada, Lucas Iberico. 2015. “The new office politics of funding the boss’s causes.” Reuters.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1977. “On Removing Certain Impediments to Democracy in the United States.” Political Science Quarterly 92(1): 120.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1986. A Preface to Economic Democracy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Drutman, Lee. 2015. The Business of America is Lobbying: The Growth of Corporate Political Activity and the Future of American Pluralism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eaton, Sabrina. 2012. “Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer.Google Scholar
Enos, Ryan D., Fowler, Anthony, and Vavreck, Lynn. 2014. “Increasing Inequality: The Effect of GOTV Mobilization on the Composition of the Electorate.” Journal of Politics 76(1): 273–88.Google Scholar
Estlund, Cynthia. 2003. Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, Brendan. 2012. “On NFIB Conference Call, Romney Urges Employers to Tell Employees How to Vote, Just Like the Kochs.” PRWatch.Google Scholar
Freeman, Richard B. 2003. “What Do Unions Do … To Voting?.” Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Frye, Timothy, John Reuter, Ora, and Szakonyi, David. 2014. “Political Machines at Work: Voter Mobilization and Electoral Subversion in the Workplace.” World Politics 66(2).Google Scholar
Galvin, Daniel J. 2016. “Deterring Wage Theft: Alt-Labor, State Politics, and the Policy Determinants of Minimum Wage Compliance.” Perspectives on Politics 14(2): 324350.Google Scholar
Gaventa, John. 1982. Power and Powerlessness. Champaign-Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Gruber, Jonathan, and Hungerman, Daniel. 2015. “Does Church Attendance Cause People to Vote? Using Blue Laws’ Repeal to Estimate the Effect of Religiosity on Voter Turnout.” British Journal of Political Science:120.Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin and Page, Benjamin I.. 2014. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12(3): 564–81.Google Scholar
NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., Inc . 395 U.S. 575 (1969).Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Steven. 2012. “Here’s a Memo From the Boss: Vote This Way.” The New York Times.Google Scholar
Hacker, Jacob S. and Pierson, Paul. 2010. Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Harvard Law Review. 2014. “Citizens United At Work: How the Landmark Decision Legalized Political Coercion in the Workplace.” Harvard Law Review 128: 669–90.Google Scholar
Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander. 2014. “Who Passes Business’s ‘Model Bills’? Policy Capacity and Corporate Influence in the U.S. States.” Perspectives on Politics 12(3): 582602.Google Scholar
Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander and Skocpol, Theda. 2015. “How the Right Trounced Liberals in the States.” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas Fall 2015 (38).Google Scholar
Keyssar, Alexander. 2009. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lambert, Susan J., Fugiel, Peter J., and Henly, Julia R.. 2014. “Precarious Work Schedules among Early-Career Employees in the US: A National Snapshot.” Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.Google Scholar
Leighley, Jan E. and Nagler, Jonathan. 2007. “Unions, Voter Turnout, and Class Bias in the U.S. Electorate, 1964–2004.” Journal of Politics 69(2): 430–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lichtenstein, Nelson. 2002. State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Charles. 1977. Politics and markets: the world’s political economic systems. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mares, Isabela. 2015. From Open Secrets to Secret Voting: Democratic electoral reforms and voter autonomy. Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mares, Isabela and Young, Lauren. 2016. “Buying, Expropriating, and Stealing Votes.” Annual Review of Political Science Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Mishel, Lawrence, Bivens, Josh, Gould, Elise, and Shierholz, Heidi. 2012. The State of Working America. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute/Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J. and Mutz, Diana C.. 2001. “Involuntary Association: How the Workplace Contributes to American Civic Life.” In Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana C. and Mondak, Jeffrey J.. 2006. “The Workplace as a Context for Cross-Cutting Political Discourse.” Journal of Politics 68(1): 140–55.Google Scholar
Phillips-Fein, Kim. 2009. Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Prywes, Daniel I. and Jones, Amos N.. 2008. “Election 2008: What Private Employers and Their Employees Need to Know About Political Activity In and Out of the Workplace.” Workplace Law Report 6(2):15.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 2001. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Rosenstone, Steven J. and Hansen, John M.. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York, NY: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Schlozman, Kay Lehman, Verba, Sidney, and Brady, Henry E.. 2012. The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Secunda, Paul M. 2008. “Toward the Viability of State-Based Legislation to Address Workplace Captive Audience Meetings in the United States.” Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 29: 209–46.Google Scholar
Secunda, Paul M. 2010. “Addressing Political Captive Audience Workplace Meetings in the Post-Citizens United Environment.” The Yale Law Journal 120(17): 1726.Google Scholar
Sheehan, Steven T. 2010. “Better Citizens through Better Living: Consumer Culture and Corporate Capital in Employee Communications and Public Relations at Du Pont Chemical, 1945–1960.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 12/13(Spring & Fall): 5578.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda. 2004. Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan C., Dunning, Thad, Nazareno, Marcelo, and Brusco, Valeria, eds. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. 1971. “The Voting Rights Act: Summary and Text.” Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney, Schlozman, Kay, and Brady, Henry. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, David. 1989. Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America. Washington, DC: Beard Books.Google Scholar
Volokh, Eugene. 2011–2012. “Private Employees’ Speech and Political Activity: Statutory Protection against Employer Retaliation.” Texas Review of Law and Politics 16: 295336.Google Scholar
Walker, Edward. 2014. Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Waterhouse, Benjamin C. 2013. Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Weil, David. 2014. The Fissured Workplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Weiner, Daniel I. 2015. “Citizens United Five Years Later.” New York, NY: Brennan Center for Justice.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Hertel-Fernandez supplementary material

Hertel-Fernandez supplementary material 1

Download Hertel-Fernandez supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 915.4 KB