ILWU ally Gordon Lafer helped Local 142 win a collective bargaining agreement with Pacific Beach Hotel in a multi-year struggle. His latest book discusses the powerful forces against America’s workers:
In the aftermath of the 2010 Citizens United decision, it’s become commonplace to note that politics has become dominated by a small slice of the economic elite. But what exactly are those members of the elite doing with their newfound influence? The One Percent Solution provides, for the first time, an answer to this question. Gordon Lafer’s book is a comprehensive account of the legislation promoted by the nation’s biggest corporate lobbies across all fifty state legislatures, encompassing a wide range of labor and economic policies.
In an era of growing economic insecurity, it turns out that one of the prime forces making life harder for American workers is a relentless offensive by the best-funded and most powerful political forces in the country, corporate lobbies who have been empowered by the Supreme Court to influence legislation with an endless supply of cash. They have successfully championed hundreds of new laws that lower wages, eliminate paid sick leave, undo the right to sue over job discrimination, and cut essential public services.
Lafer shows how corporate strategies have been shaped by twenty-first-century conditions including globalization, economic decline, and the populism reflected in both the Trump and Sanders campaigns. Finally, Lafer shows how the corporate legislative agenda has come to endanger the scope of democracy itself.
Click here to find ‘The One Percent Solution’ at ILWU Local 5-represented Powells Books