In Ohio, Public Work Is a Road to the Middle Class

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GALLIPOLIS, Ohio — Jodi and Ralph Taylor are public workers whose jobs as a janitor and a sewer manager cover life’s basics. They have moved out of a trailer into a house, do not have to rely on food stamps and sometimes even splurge for the spicy wing specials at the Courtside Bar & Grill.

While that might not seem like much, jobs like theirs, with benefits and higher-than-minimum wages, are considered plum in this depressed corner of southern Ohio. Decades of industrial decline have eroded private sector jobs here, leaving a thin crust of low-paying service work that make public-sector jobs look great in comparison.

Now, as Ohio’s legislature moves toward final approval of a bill that would chip away at public sector union, those workers say they see it as the opening bell in a race to the bottom. At stake, they say, is what little they have that makes them middle class.

“These jobs let you put good food on the table and send your kids on school trips,” said Monty Blanton, a retired electrician and union worker. “The gap between low and middle is collapsing.”

Gallipolis (pronounced Gal-IP-po-LEES) is a faded town on the Ohio River, one whose fortunes fell with the decline in industries like steel in bigger cities along the river. That erased a swath of middle-income jobs in the area, said Bob Walton, who, as a commissioner for the Southern Ohio Port Authority, an economic development agency, has tracked the economic history of the area for decades.

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Money is still tight. When their washing machine broke in November, they had to put the new one on a credit card. They could not afford college for either of their sons. One is in the Marines, and the other, a high school senior, just enlisted.

“We’re not living in any rich, high-income way,” said Ms. Taylor, 37, who, together with her husband, protested the public sector bill in Columbus this month. “What are they wanting?” she said of the bill. “For everyone to be making minimum wage?”

Wages at the bottom of the labor market have stagnated since 1970, with inflation gobbling up gains made over the years. The federal minimum wage buys you a lot less today; it represented just 38 percent of the average hourly wage for private, nonsupervisory workers in 2010, down from 47 percent in 1970, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(...)

Pensions have shriveled. In 1985, medium- and large-size firms paid full pensions to four out of five workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2010, that number was down to one in three. Four out of five public workers still receive the full benefit.

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“Around here you either choose drugs or the military,” said Kandi Marcum, a cashier at a dollar store, whose 19-year-old daughter, a McDonald’s worker, is leaving for basic training this month. “I want to get her away from this,” she said, waving her arm angrily. “I hate that she’s here.”

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/us/16ohio.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

"What are they wanting? For everyone to be making minimum wage?" asked Jodi Taylor in this article. BAM! Republicans value most public employees as much as fast food clerks, it appears.

And people like Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (who wants to run for president next year) call public workers the "privileged elite."

This article also asserts that public workers are more likely to receive full pensions than do private sector workers (see "Pensions have shriveled").