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^{[clarification needed]} 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.