Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists

Synopsis

American 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 mobilizing workers has become an appealing corporate political strategy in recent decades, and 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 adhere 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 advancing policy change than making campaign contributions or buying electoral ads. By carefully examining a growing yet underappreciated political practice, Politics at Work reveals the novel methods corporations have employed in recent years to increase their power over the American political process. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between inequality, public policy, and American democracy. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez is Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His research has appeared in the American Prospect, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and Democracy Journal, as well as numerous scholarly journals.

Copyright:

2018

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

334 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780190629892

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Date of Addition:

01/20/25

Copyrighted By:

Oxford University Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Politics and Government, Sociology

Submitted By:

Terry Gorman

Proofread By:

Terry Gorman

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.