This is a cross-post from the Fire Fighters (IAFF) union. 

IAFF Local 48 member Doug Stern spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday night.

Stern says for the majority of his life he identified as a Republican. But with last year’s political assault on Ohio’s public employees, he felt that the Republican Party left him and other members of the middle class behind.

Stern, a Cincinnati firefighter since 1996, has a unique perspective on the labor movement. He played a central role in Ohio’s 2011 fight to repeal Senate Bill 5, and he worked with the grassroots organization We Are Ohio on behalf of the Ohio Association of Professional Fire Fighters to use traditional and new media to help rally nearly 10,000 union firefighters and other citizens to vote "no" on Issue 2.

“Somewhere along the way public employees, teachers, nurses, cops and firefighters were scapegoats for the GOP,” Stern says.

This election is about who respects my profession and my family. I saw first-hand what the Republicans thought of me and my fellow public employees when last year Ohio legislators passed Senate Bill 5 in an attempt to silence us. And we all know how that ended up.

 Issue 2 would have stripped firefighters of being able to bargain collectively.

“Ohio is a battleground state and the vitriol toward firefighters is high,” Stern says. “So it is important to have a union firefighter speak.”