Gordon Lafer

Gordon Lafer started his political work as an economic policy analyst in the Office of the Mayor in New York City under Mayor Ed Koch.[5]

He was one of the leaders of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale, which was on strike several times in the 1990s.[6][7]

Lafer served as Research and Communications Director for the Federation of University Employees at Yale.[8]

He ran a hotel workers' campaign with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 142, in Hawaii,[9][10] and wrote about the campaign in the magazine Dissent.[11]

At the University of Oregon, Lafer and mathematician Marie A. Vitulli led an effort to unionize faculty at the University of Oregon beginning in the spring of 2007.[12] This effort eventually led to the formation of the United Academics at the University of Oregon.[13]

He worked for ILWU Local 142, helping coordinate the boycott of the Pacific Beach Hotel,[14] which was found guilty of multiple labor law violations in federal court.[15] After a ten-year struggle, the hotel unionized in 2013.[16]

Lafer has served as Senior Labor Policy Advisor for the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and the Workforce,[17] a position that made him the top congressional staff member responsible for upholding labor standards in international trade treaties,[18] and he has been called to testify as an expert witness before multiple state legislatures.[19] He was the primary Congressional staff person responsible for the Local Jobs for America Act,[20] a bill that would have created one million decently-paid jobs and restored essential public services that were cut during the Great Recession. The bill was introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chair of the United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce, but never became law.[21][22]

Lafer is a member of the Scholars' Advisory Council of in the Public Interest,[23] a research and policy center promoting democratic control of public goods and services.[24]

He is the founding co-chair of the American Political Science Association's Labor Project,[25] and serves on the board of directors of the Shalom Hartman Institute,[26] a pluralistic center of research and education deepening and elevating the quality of Jewish life in Israel and around the world.[27]

As of 2023, Lafer was Vice Chair of the Eugene School District Board of Directors, to which he was elected in 2019. His term expired June 30, 2023,[28] as he lost his campaign for reelection in the May 16, 2023 Special District Election.[29]

Lafer is the author of the books The Job Training Charade and The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time[30][31]

Lafer's work has appeared in The Nation[32] and U.S. News & World Report[33] and has been featured in The Washington Post,[34] The New York Times,[35] Fortune magazine,[36] and other publications.