Mitt Romney is urging employers to tell their workers how to vote. Labor journalist Mike Elk has reported on a June 6 conference call, which was posted on the website of the National Federation of Independent Business, in which Romney told his listeners that President Obama has been bad for business, and then added:
"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, I hope you pass those along to your employees."
Of course the "whatever your view" part is disingenuous. Romney knows it's a very safe bet that most of the bosses he was talking to will vote for him. Romney figures that if all the workers in the country would vote the way their bosses vote, he'd be guaranteed victory.
Romney went on to assure his audience that there's "nothing illegal" about bosses telling workers how they should vote. In the wake of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which elevated corporate political "free speech rights" above any democratic values, Romney is probably right. The current Supreme Court majority agrees with Romney that "corporations are people" (or "persons"). The courts might therefore let a company get away with telling its workers how to vote, and even firing workers who disobey. Only workers represented by a union, with a contract that prohibits discipline or discharge without just cause, have reliable protection against such politically-motivated coercion and firings. That's one of the reasons the Republican Party is committed to crushing unions -- we are one of the few obstacles standing in the way of total corporate domination of American politics.
SOME COMPANIES ALREADY TELLING WORKERS HOW TO VOTE
It's already known that some bosses are following Romney's advice and telling workers how to vote.
David Siegal, the CEO of Westgate Resorts, a giant timeshare company, emailed his employees telling them that the reelection of President Obama would "threaten your job." Siegal added "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." Siegal and his wife are famous for building themselves the largest house in the United States, a 90,000 square foot monument to over-the-top bad taste.
Bob Murray, the CEO of coal company Murray Energy, has pressured employees to donate money to the Romney campaign, and in August forced miners at the Century Mine in Beallsville, Ohio to give up a days' pay to attend a Romney rally. The Ohio Democratic Party is seeking a criminal investigation of Murray's tactics.
The CEO of ASG Software Solutions, Arthur Allen, threatened his 1,000 employees with the demise of the company unless Romney is elected. "If we fail as a nation to make the right choice on November 6th, and we lose our independence as a company, I don't want to hear any complaints regarding the fallout that will most likely come... I am asking you to give us one more chance to stay independent by voting in a new President and administration on November 6th."
Richard Lacks, CEO of Lacks Enterprises, a Michigan auto parts manufacturer, wrote to his 2,300 employees, warning that not voting for Mitt Romney could lead to higher taxes and lower pay. "It is important that in November you vote to improve your standard of living and that will be through smaller government and less government," Lacks wrote. It's hard to see how Mitt Romney's plan to let the auto industry collapse would have benefited anyone who works in that industry.
No employer campaign to sway employees' votes would be complete without the infamous Koch brothers, billionaire bankrollers of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC); union-busting legislation in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states; voter-suppression efforts; and anti-worker politicians like Scott Walker. A company letter to employees and retirees of Koch Industries, headed by David and Charles Koch, does not explicitly endorse Romney, but warns that "(i)f we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, (and) put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses... then many of our 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences..."
FOR NON-UNION WORKERS, THE COERCION IS REAL
How many more companies are telling their workers how to vote, perhaps even more blatantly and with more explicit threats than these examples? We may never know. Are the Romney campaign, the Republican National Committee, right-wing super PACs such as Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, or business lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce coordinating employer efforts to sway employee votes? We don't know, but in the future we could see such coordinated efforts to pressure workers.
If the employer in a UE workplace tried to tell union members how to vote, it would probably backfire. UE members know how to use their rights to push back against such employer pressure. But for many non-union workers, the boss telling you how to vote can be very intimidating. Such workers are "at-will" employees who can be fired for no reason, or for any reason that doesn't violate specific anti-discrimination laws. If the company tells everyone to vote for the Republicans, and a worker is overheard telling a co-worker that she or he plans to vote for a Democrat, that worker's job could be in jeopardy.
There are three lessons for union members in this story: We need to push for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and declare that corporations are not people and don't have rights that outweigh human rights; we need to build the union movement so that fewer workers are subject to employer intimidation; and, most immediately, we all need to vote on November 6.
Mike Elk, who broke the story of Romney's conference call with business owners with an October 17 article for Working In These Times, is the son of UE International Representative Gene Elk. The story was then picked up by the Huffington Post.