Poll: Workers want employer input on issues

Employees consider their employers to be the most credible source on politics and public policy, according to a poll from the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC).
 
The poll is part of BIPAC’s Prosperity Project, known as P2, which aims to get businesses to start talking to their employees about policy issues.   
 
“It’s a process of encouraging civic engagement,” said BIPAC CEO Greg Casey.
 
The idea is that employers talk to their employees about where they stand on certain, and the employees then become advocates for those issues.
 
For too long, Casey said, people have said employers should not have a point of view.
 
“Employees want to hear from their employers,” he said.
 
Casey said employees are in no way coerced into siding politically with their employer. It’s up to the employee, he said, to decide whether to follow the policy recommendation.
 
In the BIPAC poll, 31 percent of respondents ranked their employers as the most credible sources on politics and public policy issues; 53 percent said company management or an employer should be active in promoting public policies that are favorable to the industry and the company’s economic success; and 63 percent said the information shared by their employers made them more likely to vote.
 
“The employer should never tell their employees how to vote, but they can be very effective messengers in educating and informing them about how both politics and public policy directly affect the markets and our system of free enterprise,” the study said.
 
BIPAC refers to itself as bipartisan, but year-over-year has contributed more to Republicans than Democrats. Of the $66,500 the group gave to candidates in 2014, 87 percent went to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets.org.  

But Casey said PAC contributions are based on the issues not the party.
 
“Issues are a strange thing,” he said. “They cut the way they cut. We don’t look at the initial behind someone’s name.  Candidates and incumbents either vote and believe in the issues we believe in or they don’t.”