This union leader wants to flip a red state with populism
After besting Kellogg's, Dan Osborn is running for Senate
Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progress Report.
Tonight’s main story is a relatively big interview, so I’m just going to run down a few different thoughts and headlines before we get to it.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court indicated support for ending the state’s prohibition on using Medicaid to pay for most abortions.
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The Democratic gerontocracy has lost its grip on reality, which makes it harder to make fun of the conservatives for being absolute dumbest people alive.
In case there was any doubt, the US is officially aiding and abetting a genocide, and getting humiliated while doing so.
OK, let’s get to the main story!
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The resurgence of the labor movement has been driven by a virtuous cycle of defiance and solidarity that began in 2021. The conditions practically demanded it: frontline workers who’d risked their lives during Covid felt unappreciated and underpaid, union contracts were expiring, and corporate profits were soaring.
One of the most high-profile work stoppages that year saw Kellogg’s factory workers, unionized under BCTGM, cripple operations at all four of the breakfast food company’s manufacturing facilities in the United States. Facing outsourcing and diminishing wages, the union held out for nearly three months until Kellogg’s caved to many of their demands. National attention and support from Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden probably didn’t hurt, but far more of the credit belonged to the union’s local leaders.
The workers at the Omaha plant were led by Local 50G president Dan Osborn, who held the line through the brutal early winter months and threats from the company. I covered the strike very closely, much to the chagrin of Kellogg’s execs, and when I learned that Osborn had decided to run for Senate in Nebraska as a full-fledged populist, it made total sense to me given the political climate. Osborn is running as an independent against sitting GOP Sen. Deb Fischer but will likely wind up with the support of the state Democratic Party.
In December, Osborn’s campaign released an internal poll that showed him two points ahead of Fischer despite low name recognition, and much further ahead when voters are told about the two candidates’ biographies and policy stances. Any internal poll can and should be viewed with a bit skepticism, but a military vet (Osborn served in the Navy) and union leader is likely to be a formidable candidate in most places — if they can get their message out.
I recently spoke with Dan about his campaign, working class politics, and the strike. We had to talk during the evening, because right now, he’s still working full-time as a union steamfitter. This is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.
Progress Report: I spent a lot of time covering the Kellogg’s strike and I think it caught the company by surprise by the union’s determination and the attention it ultimately got.
Dan Osborn: The John Deere strike was going on there as well. If I remember correctly, I think there were probably 40 to 50 strikes going on around that time. John Deere settled a little bit before we did. You wouldn’t [settle either] when you have company like Kellogg's and their workers are on strike to preserve their wages and benefits.
I say preserved because that's what we were doing — we weren't asking for a whole lot in that contract, and this was at a time when the company profited $2 billion during COVID and its CEO gave himself a $2 million raise. They were even trying to take our cost of living [raise] from us.
You guys lasted almost three months, and I know it could have been longer. It didn’t seem the like the top union brass were pulling the strings on a day-to-day basis. Did you feel in charge of the operation?
I kind of expected the International union to come down with a couple guys in suits and hand me the playbook, like “Hey, this is the way we run a strike.” Well, that's not reality, so I had to figure everything out.
We set up GoFundMe pages and I started talking to the police and the firefighters and everybody that I needed to talk to, then started drumming up support with the buildings and trades unions, the Omaha Federation of Labor, the Nebraska Federation of Labor, as many people as I could to figure this thing out.
The support from Democrats came easy, but I knew that for our path to victory, we were going to have to gain Republican support. So I set out and I got Republican Congressman Don Bacon to come out to our picket line. Then I got Pete Ricketts, who is now a US Senator but was the Republican governor at the time, to draft a letter imploring Steve Cahillane, the CEO, to get our people back to work.
Did that work, the political and coordination and organizing of it all, start making you think about running for office?
[The strike] was something that I was thrust into, not something I asked for. When you take a strike vote, you vote not to go out on strike at that moment in time, but to allow your international to be able to strike if at the [bargaining] table things aren't going right. But the proposals that our union had were not getting met.
As difficult as it was — I liked to call it controlled chaos — I felt that it came pretty natural to me. And in the end, when we got our contract, and we got our people back to work, I felt a huge sense of joy. I just felt good for what I did and the fact that I helped people get back to work. That’s what I'm doing again now, but hopefully on a larger scale. I can help effect positive change in people's lives, hopefully make people's lives better.
Was there any moment beyond that strike that motivated you to jump into the Senate race?
This all started with railroaders out in North Platte, Nebraska. They were upset with — well, with both parties, but Sen Deb Fischer in particular. She is my opponent in this race, and they were upset at her for voting to make them accept a contract when all they were holding out for was seven days of PTO.
As somebody who's worked over 3000 hours a year, if you do the math, that's about a little over 60 hours a week for the last 20 years. I understand what wanting a little bit more work-life balance means. They're working out in the elements, they're missing birthday parties, soccer games, you name it, they're missing it. And they're selling their minutes to this railroads, and these railroads are making these exorbitant profits.
It was the same thing when we're out on strike: we just want a piece of the pie and we want to be able to live a decent life. Part of living a decent life is making a good wage, but it's also being able to spend time with your family. And that's what [the Senate] voted against.
It took me about three weeks and I came to the realization over a lot of pondering and talking to people that I respected in my life. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that has to be done. At this point in our in American history, this just simply has to be done right now. And I do believe that I'm the one that can do it.
I think Democrats were surprised at the backlash that they got for that vote. Now they’re touting the improved economy, but cost of living is still so high. What do you think they’re missing? Why can’t they see that?
Well, first of all, these people have been running our country for quite a long time. They’re disassociated from my reality. I'm not sure how much money you have, but my reality is I go to a grocery store and the $250 or $300 that I normally spend, that would get me a full cart of groceries for my family of five, it now barely lines the bottom of it. Then you’ve put gas in your car, your property taxes are going through the roof, and people are struggling. Shoot, just to go through a drive-thru at Burger King for a single a single person is like $12 now, so it's unsustainable.
People are sick and tired of Congress members and senators getting into government, who have a net worth of $300,000 when they get there and 12 years later, they're worth $4.4 million.
I looked through your platform and you talk a lot about corporate monopolies and farm subsidies and priorities. What kind of policies do you think you’d champion to help with the stuff we just spoke about?
There’s military spending, for one. I'm prior military so I’m certainly not for cutting the military in any way, but I know for a fact that there are contracts and that we're spending way too much on military contractors. [Politicians] talk about shifting taxes from the middle class, and small businesses, but how would you pay for that?
Well, it's fairly simple — simply said, not necessarily simply done. But it’s about changing the tax code so these monopolistic corporations, the multinationals, can't funnel their money overseas and that they have to pay their fair share of taxes. Then there’s marijuana, legalizing that and taxing it.
There’s an effort now to break up monopolies, and it seems like people are starting to understand their impact on the economy. The egg price-fixing scheme comes to mind.
Regular people like you and I can't afford to buy senators and congressmen but Cargill and and Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe certainly can. There's a good percentage of politicians that are owned by special interests, so when they go to vote, they're voting on who's got the biggest hand in their pocket.
I think people are starting to recognize that and they're starting to get fed up with it. I'm certainly fed up with it, which is one of the main reasons why I'm running as an independent. I'm going to be free to vote my heart and my conscience.
Running as an independent does have its challenges, especially financially. How are you planning to overcome that and get a campaign that can compete?
It just starts with word of mouth. We were doing house parties, probably a few times a week, where we get together with 10 to 15 people, and those 10 to 15 people will branch out and talk to 10 or 15 more people making phone calls. I’m spending two, three hours every night branching out to as many people as I can. Deb Fischer is going to outspend us, three-to-one, minimum, but we don’t believe we have to match her dollar for dollar.
I'm working 40 hours a week as a steamfitter right now. I'm doing this race right now with one hand tied behind my back. But March 1 is legally when the campaign can start paying me and I can hopefully take a leave of absence, even if that’s just fewer hours at work. Then we can start trying to hit the 93 counties in person and going out and talking to people and knocking doors. But until that point, I'm working 40 hours. And that's a regular working person, that's why people don't run. It’s difficult, but we're gonna do it.
What’s always interesting to me is how people’s partisanship doesn’t match their preferred policies. Do you think being an independent could help with that in a state like Nebraska?
For a lot of people, it’s automatic. I spoke with a lady who kind of opened my eyes because she was like, “Well, my, my dad and my grandfather, everybody before me voted Republican.” And she's like, “I don't necessarily, when I go to the actual ballot box, I don't necessarily vote Republican,” but she would never change her registration. That's how they were raised. And I respect that, but I think with this campaign, hopefully people will see that hey, you know, there there is another choice out there and maybe there's something different. ,
When I start talking about right to repair and small family farms, trying to make them more competitive… there are going to be some people that see this and think “hey, I can get behind that guy. A military veteran, he's not out to get himself rich by going into government, he just wants to do the right thing.” And that's me.
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Goood stuff