Rodney Crow
About two dozen USW activists near Denver are building momentum in a campaign meant to drive voter turnout for this year's midterm elections.
"This is our survival," said USW Local 12-710 Vice President Rodney Crow, a roll clamp driver at RockTenn's Denver facility, which produces corrugated cardboard boxes. "If Colorado working families aren't voting, we lose our voices."
USW members and our families throughout the U.S. are already familiar with the consequences of too many middle- and working-class voters staying home on Election Day.
"In 2002, Bob Bauprez won his congressional seat by only 181 votes," Crow said. "A group the size of a local union decided the election."
Gov. John Hickenlooper, who signed into law earlier this year the Colorado Jobs Act that requires state projects to employ residents, now faces Bauprez in a very close race.
In Colorado, USW activists are knocking on 800 doors each day. So far, the group has reached nearly 8,000 homes and will likely visit 20,000 before the Nov. 4 election.
The USW efforts are non-partisan by design and aimed at helping individuals get the information they need to make sure their voices are heard.
"If we want politicians to stop passing right-to-work laws and we want to stop rewarding companies that ship jobs overseas, we need them to know that we are mobilized and will vote," Crow said.
So far, the efforts are already seeing results, with 12 percent of registered voters in Jefferson county having returned their mail-in ballots.
For those who have not, Crow and the USW will be out knocking on doors to help make their voices heard.
"There's no persuasion involved," Crow said. "We aren't promoting any specific candidate or issue."
"When we come to a person's door with a list of voting locations and ballot instructions, they're grateful," he said. "My favorite part is when they say, 'Thank you for what you're doing.' "
I Was Born For This
Renee Johnson
"Getting people out to vote in Colorado is different," said USW Local 2102 member and Women of Steel activist Renee Johnson.
In Colorado, every registered voter receives a ballot in the mail, so people need clear instructions on where to send or drop off their completed ballots to ensure that they are counted.
Johnson, a pipe stockman at Evraz Steel in Pueblo, is a third-generation Steelworker, following her father and grandfather, which makes her son a fourth-generation USW member. She has been an activist almost her whole life.
"I was only about 10 years old when I told my father I wanted to join the social justice protests in Berkeley in the 1960s," she said. "I was born for this."
Johnson knows the importance of making sure people vote in midterm elections and what's at stake in Colorado and across the country.
"Laws allowed my former employer to dump our pensions in bankruptcy court," Johnson said. "If we don't vote, workers can expect to keep working harder for less pay when their states pass right-to-work laws."
On the other hand, turning out masses of voters for a midterm election can be a major boost for working- and middle-class families.
"If we want to make higher education affordable, we can; if we want to raise the minimum wage, we can," Johnson said. "If we want to protect and strengthen workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively, we absolutely must vote."
Johnson credits her local and its leadership for mentoring her into a vocal activist and leader.
"I didn't see myself doing this 20 years ago," she said, "but this work is vital and important for the futures of our union and our country."
The Mayor Of Sweet Home, Oregon
Jim Gourley
Today, and each day from now until the election on Nov. 4, Jim Gourley, an activist and millwright from USW Local 1189 at Cascade Pacific Pulp in Halsey, Oregon, is leading a group of union volunteers on a door-to-door block walk near Denver.
Gourley is also a vice president of the Oregon State AFL-CIO, chairman of the USW Oregon Legislative and Education Committee and, for the last 22 years, a council member and mayor of Sweet Home, Oregon, population 10,000.
"Thirty-thousand during the music fest," he says. "There are people who camp for all five days."
Sweet Home hosts one of three outdoor country and western music festivals in the surrounding area, and at least according to its mayor, the best. His pride in his community and passion for public service are what led him to suburban Denver to participate in the USW's 2014 get-out-the-vote campaign.
"People appreciate that we care if they vote or not and respect us for having useful and important information to share," Gourley said. "We aren't pushing a party or candidate but empowering individuals who need help to ensure their voices are heard, and it's working."
Gourley is not exaggerating. On a recent walk, almost all of the contacts responded positively and several offered their thanks for the USW's work to help get voters to the polls – even a few with large dogs and "no soliciting" notes posted on their doors.
"We have an opportunity now to build our political outreach through this success," he said. "With more volunteers we will get more people to the polls and be more likely to elect candidates who will stand up for us workers and our families."