On the Campaign Front Lines
Ralph Schwieger
USW Local 2232
A Good Reason to Volunteer
"It's unbelievable what's happening in this country," says Ralph Schwieger. "It's like Teflon: it doesn't stick. You see it in the news one day and the next week it's gone. In my opinion, this country should be up in arms and asking what's going on."
A member of United Steelworkers Local 2232, Schwieger is a setup man at STRATTEC Security Corp. in Milwaukee, which makes locks and keys for the Big Three in the domestic auto industry.
Three main issues concern him this election year: good jobs, health care and the war in Iraq.
First, jobs. "Milwaukee is one of the poorest cities in the country and we've lost a huge amount of our manufacturing base," says Schwieger. "This city is in real bad shape for finding family-supporting jobs. When you lose your job at a union factory and have to go to a lower-paying job, you might be working three jobs to replace the income you lost on that one good job."
As the Big Three suffer losses, STRATTEC feels the crunch. "Last week, we just had a layoff of about 10 people," Schwieger notes. "And management just announced that they're going to permanently eliminate 40 of our jobs by the end of the year and move them to Mexico."
The problem isn’t just at STRATTEC. "I have a neighbor who was a mechanic for the transit system in Milwaukee," he says. "It's been a nightmare for him. He has a wife and two children still in the house, and he's trying to find decent work and someplace that will provide health care. He's exhausted his savings."
Health care has long been a concern to Schwieger and his co-workers. "In negotiations, every time we go in, health care is always a contentious issue, to say the least," he says. "We've been forced into the 'Healthy Consumer Plan,' they call it. That's another way they're shifting the cost from the corporation onto our backs. The deductibles went through the ceiling. After the last contract, I lost a dollar an hour, and when you combine that with the added costs of this Healthy Consumer Plan, it's bad for me personally all around."
The war in Iraq is also a deciding factor for Schwieger. "We've got ourselves into a mess over there that we're going to leave for my grandchildren," he says. "I just do not see an end to this at all. We have 47 million people in this country who don't have health insurance, and the waste and fraud alone that's going on in Iraq could probably pay for national health care—and that doesn't say anything about our own troops and the Iraqis that have been slaughtered. I can't believe how this is being allowed to happen."
In the past, Schwieger has been a rank-and-file volunteer in USW political activities. Now, he's on release time from STRATTEC and temporarily working full-time for USW's campaign for Labor 2006.
"We're in a member-to-member campaign," he explains. "That involves phone banking, member-to-member walks and leafleting at all of the USW worksites. Our goal is to put out four fliers before the election. We're standing out at the plant gates, putting leaflets in members' hands that compare the candidates on different issues.
"Personally, I've done phone banking, member-to-member walks, leafleting. We just had our state AFL-CIO convention a couple weeks ago, and the statistics are that 81 percent of union members will vote with the union-recommended candidate if they're given a flier, and it's put in their hands by another union member."
Schwieger’s working hard to recruit his union sisters and brothers to volunteer for Labor 2006. "My plan today is, I went to the union office," he says. "Right after I get off the phone with you, I'm going to call the members who were already laid off. I'm going to see if they have time to volunteer on the campaign. This year, they have a good reason to volunteer."
