United Auto Workers built Oshkosh Defense; it’s time for the company to invest back in us
For more than 12 years, I have worked at Oshkosh Defense, building more defense and all-terrain vehicles than I can count. As a Wisconsin resident since my childhood, I take great pride in working at a company founded in our state and built by Wisconsin hands like mine — I’d like to see it stay that way.
That’s part of the reason I got involved in the United Auto Workers: because I think it’s important that workers have a voice on the job to help strengthen our workplace and respond to issues.
That’s why it was so upsetting to me, both as the current president of UAW Local 578 and on a personal level, when Oshkosh Defense decided to send the new multibillion-dollar contract to build U.S. Postal Service mail trucks, including new electric vehicle models, to a former Rite-Aid distribution center in South Carolina instead of bringing the production here, where our factories and teams are ready and waiting for new work. It’s baffling.
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We have a very proud UAW-represented workforce here, which is highly trained to more than handle the demands of the Postal Service. The company won this contract because of the long history of high quality work in Oshkosh, not in South Carolina. In fact, Oshkosh Defense has no production in South Carolina whatsoever.
After decades of working together to build the company’s reputation nationwide and recruit a talented and trustworthy workforce and after proving ourselves again and again on the production line, the writing is on the wall: Oshkosh Defense is disregarding the union workforce and, what’s even more upsetting, the community which has embraced the company for decades. As a consequence of this decision, the jobs of thousands here in Wisconsin are less secure, and that will affect communities across the Fox Valley.
Around a decade ago, there were more than 3,000 people working hourly positions here in Oshkosh, side-by-side on the assembly line, in our weld and fab shop, our paint shop, materials, quality control and much more. We built dozens of different vehicles — military trucks, cement mixers, municipal vehicles and more — each day with the protection of a union contract. The knowledge and experience of our teams made us the go-to company for special purpose vehicle production.
Now we’re down to fewer than 1,800 employees, with empty factories and vacant workspaces, and production continues to slow. Not only can we build the new Postal Service vehicle, we need it for our job security. That’s why the new contract belongs here in Wisconsin and should be built by union labor — just as Oshkosh Defense products have always been. We can build these trucks right across the street in underutilized factory space, which would create hundreds more good-paying union jobs, support our workers and families who live across 14 counties in Wisconsin and bring business to our locally owned shops that count on our spending.
Going the way we’re going would be a huge loss to the Fox Valley and to the company we all have worked so hard to build. Oshkosh Defense should produce this vehicle in Oshkosh and stay true to its identity as a proud, union-powered Wisconsin company.
Robert Lynk is president and chairperson of UAW Local 578.
