UAW Members Successfully Oust Commissioner Responsible for 8-Month Strike in Lorain County, Ohio
After months of organizing that began in July, the UAW has helped oust Lorain County Commissioner Jeff Riddell, who refused to settle a fair contract with striking Lorain County Job and Family Services workers. Frustrated by his resistance to good-faith negotiations, the union shifted its fight from the bargaining table to the voting booth, reaching ten thousand doors of UAW members across Lorain County to turn out the vote for Riddell’s opponent, Carolyn White.
“Our members put in the work to ensure elected officials are held accountable to the voters they serve,” said UAW Region 2B Director Dave Green. “UAW members stayed focused on making sure county, state, and federal governments work to make people’s lives better, not harder. When elected officials fail working people, UAW members have shown they will hold them accountable at the ballot box.”
The UAW’s electoral program mobilized 150 UAW members and volunteers to knock on thousands of doors and make tens of thousands of phone calls to union members in Elyria, North Ridgeville, Avon, Vermilion, Oberlin, Wellington, Grafton, and Sheffield in Lorain County. Since February 18, UAW Local 2192 members at Lorain County Job and Family Services have been on strike after county commissioners, including Riddell, refused to approve the $1-per-hour raises workers need to keep up with today’s affordability crisis.
“This is absolute proof: voters in Lorain County are sick of corrupt elected officials like Jeff Riddell who are bad at their jobs,” said UAW Local 2192 bargaining committee chair and case worker on strike at Job and Family Services. “We’re facing too much of an affordability crisis that all of us are hurt by. Our strike has been the clearest example of how important it is to elect people who represent the interests of the working class.”
Riddell’s refusal to reach a fair agreement with public service workers prolonged Lorain County’s public service crisis, extending what is already the longest public-sector strike in Ohio history and putting it just weeks away from becoming the longest in U.S. history.
UAW canvassers knocking on doors across Lorain County came from workplaces throughout the area represented by the union. Even while on strike during the week, UAW Local 2192 members volunteered on Saturdays, joining large-scale canvass efforts to talk with fellow UAW members and their families about why Commissioner Jeff Riddell needed to be ousted on November 3.
