Charlie Odier – PAC Member of the Quarter

Charlie Odier – PAC Member of the Quarter

For the past 10 years, Charlie Odier has been working overtime to educate his co-workers on important political issues and rally them to join the cause by contributing to the USW’s PAC fund and turning out for political actions.

charlieThe workers at BF Goodrich in Woodburn, Ind., members of Local 715L, have responded in a big way. They average $2,000 per month in PAC contributions, and Odier has built the local’s political and Rapid Response team from just a few people 10 years ago to more than 20 today.

“It’s amazing how much you can get done when nobody cares who gets credit for it,” Odier said. “My goal isn’t to get credit for it – my goal is to get it done.”

For all that he has done, Odier is the USW PAC Member of the Quarter for the spring of 2014.

After working at the BF Goodrich plant for 45 years and serving as chair of the local’s Rapid Response and political education committees for 10 years, Odier is getting ready to retire in June. He won’t be giving up his activism, though – he will be a candidate for the Indiana State House’s District 52 seat in the November election.

 “We’ve got a really good group of people who keep everyone informed,” Odier said. “Working people are getting screwed and they’ve got to start standing up.”

Odier said right-wing politicians have been good at disguising their attacks on working families by using misleading names such as “right to work” and “tax fairness” for legislation that simply puts more money and power in the hands of the rich. 

“They word these things really pretty, and people don’t understand,” he said. “We explain to them what it really means. We let people know what these people say and what they mean are two different things.”

Odier and his team have held voter-registration drives, signing up more than 10,000 people. They have held “Made in the USA” rallies and lobbied Indiana lawmakers to pass Buy American ordinances at the state and local levels. They helped turn out 40,000 people to a rally at the Indiana State House in 2012 when lawmakers were in the process of passing the anti-union right-to-work (for less) law.

Their work hasn’t gone unnoticed. When Michelle Obama was planning a visit to the Fort Wayne area during her husband’s first run for the White House in 2008, the campaign’s first call was not to a local party official or committee, but to Odier and other Local 715L leaders, who took part in the soon-to-be First Lady’s motorcade around their northeastern Indiana community.

As he gets ready to leave the workplace and enter a new phase of activism, Odier has been grooming younger members in the local to take over much of his duties. He has taken them on lobbying visits and to Rapid Response events, where they get to see first-hand how right-wing attacks on workers affect them and their families.

“They have all of this coming at them,” he said. “And they’re the ones who are going to have to live with this stuff.”

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