U.S. Senate candidates Mandela Barnes and Ron Johnson differ on all the major issues facing Wisconsin and the United States. But it is safe to say that no issue separates the Democratic challenger and the Republican incumbent more completely than the question of whether they will stand up for Wisconsin workers.
Johnson, a multi-millionaire whose Senate service had focused on enriching himself and his campaign donors, has a history of attacking workers and unions. When he was mounting his first Senate bid in 2010, he championed the free-trade agenda that even Donald Trump would ultimately acknowledge was a disaster. “The fact of the matter is NAFTA and CAFTA have actually been successful for our economy,” announced Johnson as Chrysler and General Motors were shuttering factories in Kenosha and Janesville.
Asked about the plant closures, Johnson chirped: “Well, in a free-market capitalist system, there are always winners and losers. It’s creative destruction. That just happens. It’s unfortunate. But let’s face it, if it weren’t for that we’d still have buggy whip companies.”
But the Kenosha and Janesville plants weren’t outdated. They were recently modernized facilities. The jobs did not need to be lost.
Now, a dozen years later as Wisconsin workers and unions struggle to secure another state-of-the-art vehicle manufacturer, Johnson’s answer is the same as it has always been: There are winners and losers, and as long as he has any say in the matter, Wisconsin workers are going to be losers.
Asked earlier this year about the decision of Oshkosh Corp. to bypass its namesake town in Wisconsin, where workers are unionized, and produce as many as 165,000 U.S. Postal Service vehicles at a nonunion facility based in South Carolina, Johnson responded, “It’s not like we don’t have enough jobs here in Wisconsin. The biggest problem we have in Wisconsin right now is employers not being able to find enough workers.”
Johnson’s casual disregard for those loss of 1,000 high-wage jobs rankled Barnes. Noting that the workers in Oshkosh are members of the United Auto Workers, just like his father, the Wisconsin Democrat said: “My dad is an active member of the UAW. He spent 30 years on the assembly line, assembling catalytic converters, and he’d be the first to tell you that if you want something built right, you build it right here in Wisconsin with our incredible union workforce.”
Barnes knows what happens when officials fail to fight for Wisconsin workers. “I think about the factory where my dad worked," he said. "Because of outsourcing, it’s gone. It’s a strip mall now. I think about the factory where my grandfather worked. Because of outsourcing, it’s gone. I learned growing up that we have to take outsourcing seriously. This is personal for me. It’s an issue that's personal for every union worker, for every member of a union family, in Wisconsin.”
So it just doesn’t make any sense to Barnes that Johnson, who resides in Oshkosh, would be so unconcerned about the loss of 1,000 jobs in that city.
“It’s not just 1,000 jobs. It’s a 1,000 opportunities for families — like the opportunities I had because my parents had good union jobs,” explained Barnes. “We cannot sit by while we have a sitting politician who’s shipping good union jobs out of our state and costing our working families opportunities. Ron Johnson wouldn’t lift a finger to protect those jobs in Oshkosh. It’s his own backyard. He wouldn’t stand up for jobs in Oshkosh. I will.”
