Yet in the post-Citizens United world, corporations and their trade associations don’t have to be quite that careful. The 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to unlimited corporate and union campaign spending also allows corporations and unions to communicate directly with employees and members about elections. They can tell them who they should vote for — and, in most states,
compel them to do political work or appear at rallies for the candidates management supports.
...
During the 2012 campaign, Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel penned a memo to his employees saying
their jobs would be at risk if President Barack Obama was re-elected.
“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 administration,” Mr. Siegel wrote. “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.”
...
Georgia-Pacific, a paper product company owned by the billionaire Koch brothers, distributed a political endorsement flier to its employees during the 2010 and 2012 elections. As
In These Times reported, Koch Industries funded the flier, which contained a cover letter that implicitly threatened job loss based on the outcome of the election:
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, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.
Koch Industries employees received a very similar flier during the 2010 election, according to
The Nation.
...
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest corporate business lobby, encouraged member companies to
include electoral messages in envelopes containing employee pay stubs in 2012.
Perhaps the most notable case of corporate political communication to employees occurred in Ohio, when Murray Energy — headed by Republican party megadonor Bob Murray — compelled workers to forgo a day of paid work
to appear at a Romney rally that would be
turned into a campaign advertisement.
Kevin Hughes, a manager at Murray Energy, told workers their attendance was “mandatory,” although Murray Energy’s chief financial officer later stated that “no one was forced to attend the event.” In
an FEC investigation into the incident, Hughes said that there was confusion about what he meant by “mandatory”:
If I used the word “mandatory” it would have been in the context of conveying that opposing the Obama Administration policies was mandatory if the coal industry is to survive.
That FEC investigation
ended in a 3-3 deadlocked vote. Another FEC investigation into alleged coercion by a United Public Workers local in Hawaii — which allegedly forced members to campaign for former Democratic Rep. Colleen Hanabusa — ended similarly.
Ahhhhhhh, this is my favourite new meme.