Damon A. Silvers is the director of policy and special counsel for the AFL-CIO. He joined the AFL-CIO as associate general counsel in 1997.
Silvers serves on a pro bono basis as a special assistant attorney general for the state of New York. Silvers is also a member of the Investor Advisory Committee of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department’s Financial Research Advisory Committee, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s Standing Advisory Group and its Investor Advisory Group.
Silvers served as the deputy chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program from 2008 to 2011. Between 2006 and 2008, Silvers served as the chair of the Competition Subcommittee of the U.S. Treasury Department Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession and as a member of the Treasury Department Investor’s Practice Committee of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
Prior to working for the AFL-CIO, Silvers worked for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union and as a law clerk at the Delaware Court of Chancery for Chancellor William T. Allen and Vice-Chancellor Bernard Balick.
Silvers led the successful efforts to restore pensions to the retirees of Cannon Mills lost in the Executive Life collapse and the severance owed to laid-off Enron Corp. and WorldCom workers following the collapse of those companies. Silvers served from 2003 to 2006 as pro bono counsel to the chairman of Ullico Inc. and, in that capacity, led the successful effort to recover more than $50 million related to improperly paid executive compensation.
Silvers received his Juris Doctor with honors from Harvard Law School. He received his Master of Business Administration with high honors from Harvard Business School and is a Baker scholar. Silvers is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude, and has studied history at King’s College, Cambridge University.
Silvers’ publications include: “A Response to Vice-Chancellor Leo Strine Jr.’s, Toward Common Sense and Common Ground? Reflections on the Shared Interests of Managers and Labor in a More Rational System of Corporate Governance,” published in The Journal of Corporation Law (2007); “The Current State of Auditing as a Profession: A View from Worker-Owners,” published in Accounting Horizons (2007); “How We Got Into This Mess,” published in The American Prospect (2008); “Securities and Exchange Commission: Restoring the Capital Markets Regulator and Responding to Crisis,” published in Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President (2008); “The Legacy of Deregulation and the Financial Crisis—Linkages Between Deregulation in Labor Markets, Housing Finance Markets, and the Broader Financial Markets,” published in The Journal of Business & Technology Law (2009); “Rebuilding Workers’ Retirement Security: A Labor Perspective on Private Pension Reform,” published in Restructuring Retirement Risk Management in a Defined Contribution World (2010); “Obligations Without the Power to Fund Them—The Origins, Consequences and Possible Solutions to the Fiscal Crisis of the States,” published in When States Go Broke: The Origins, Context, and Solutions for the American States in Fiscal Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2012); and “Deregulation and the New Financial Architecture,” published in The Handbook of The Political Economy of Financial Crises (Oxford University Press, 2013).