Here's something apropos that I've had in my files for a couple of weeks, not
knowing what to do with it. Having been a biker myself, I can appreciate the
guys agony in having to give up his Harley.
Ed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blue-Collar Jobs Disappear, Taking Families' Way of Life Along
By Erik Eckholm
The New York Times
Wednesday 16 January 2008
Jackson, Ohio - After 30 years at a factory making truck parts, Jeffrey
Evans was earning $14.55 an hour in what he called "one of the better-paying
jobs in the area."
Wearing a Harley-Davidson cap, a bittersweet reminder of crushed dreams, he
recently described how astonished and betrayed he felt when the plant was shut
down in August after a labor dispute. Despite sporadic construction work, Mr.
Evans has seen his income reduced by half.
So he was astonished yet again to find himself, at age 49, selling off his
cherished Harley and most of his apartment furniture and moving in with his
mother.
Middle-aged men moving in with parents, wives taking two jobs, veteran
workers taking overnight shifts at half their former pay, families moving West
- these are signs of the turmoil and stresses emerging in the little towns and
backwoods mobile homes of southeast Ohio, where dozens of factories and several
coal mines have closed over the last decade, and small businesses are giving
way to big-box retailers and fast-food outlets.
Here, where the northern swells of the Appalachians lap the southern fringe
of the Rust Belt, thousands of people who long had tough but sustainable lives
are being wrenched into the working poor.
The region presents an acute example of trends affecting many parts of
Ohio, Michigan and other pockets of the Midwest.
Slammed by the continued decline in the automobile and steel businesses,
Ohio never recovered from the recession of 2001-2, and blue-collar families who
had made it partway up the economic ladder find themselves slipping back, with
chaotic effects on families and dreams.
Throughout the state, the percentage of families living below the poverty
line - just over $20,000 for a family of four last year - rose slightly from 14
percent in 2005 to 16 percent in 2007, one study found. But equally striking is
the rise in younger working families struggling above that line. The numbers
are more dismal in the southeastern Appalachian part of the state, where 32
percent of families lived below the poverty line in 2007, according to the
study, and 56 percent lived with incomes less than $40,000 for a family of four.
"These younger workers should be the backbone of the economy," said Shiloh
Turner, study director for the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, which
conducted the surveys. But in parts of Ohio, Ms. Turner said, half or more "are
barely making ends meet."
One consequence is an upending of the traditional pattern, in which
middle-aged children take in an elderly parent. As $15-an-hour factory jobs are
replaced by $7- or $8-an-hour retail jobs, more men in their 30s and 40s are
moving in with their parents or grandparents, said Cheryl Thiessen, the
director of Jackson/Vinton Community Action, which runs medical, fuel and other
aid programs in Jackson and Vinton Counties.
Other unemployed or low-wage workers, some with families, find themselves
staying with one relative after another, Ms. Thiessen said, serially wearing
out their welcome.
"A lot of major employers have left, and the town is drying up," Ms.
Thiessen said of Jackson. "We're starting to lose small shops, too - Hallmark,
the jewelry and shoe stores, the movie theater and most of the grocery stores."
Shari Joos, 45, a married mother of four boys in nearby Wellston, said, "If
you don't work at Wal-Mart, the only job you can get around here is in fast
food."
Between her husband's factory job and her intermittent work, they made
$30,000 a year in the best of times, Mrs. Joos said. Since last fall, when her
husband was laid off by the Merillat cabinet factory, which downsized to one
shift a day from three, keeping anywhere near that income required Mrs. Joos to
take a second job. She works at a school cafeteria each weekday from 9:30 a.m.
to 1 p.m and then drives to Wal-Mart, where she relaxes in her car before
starting her 2-to-10 p.m. shift at the deli counter.
Her 20-year-old son went to college for two years, earning an associate
degree in information science, but cannot find any jobs nearby. He still works
at McDonald's and lives at home as he ponders whether to move to a distant
city, as most local college graduates must. Her 22-year-old son works at Burger
King and lives with his grandparents - "that was his way of moving out," Mrs.
Joos said.
In late December her husband landed a new job, driving a fork lift at a
Wal-Mart distribution center, a shift that ends at 2:30 a.m. It pays a little
less than he used to make and is an hour's drive away, so gasoline soaks up a
painful share of his wages.
"We never see each other," Mrs. Joos, 45, said on a recent morning as she
packed a roast beef and cheese sandwich for her evening meal. "We never even
think of taking a vacation."
Luckily they had paid off their mobile home and an addition they built.
As experienced men in this corner of Ohio have found themselves working for
lower wages, others feel they must move.
"I'm ain't going to work for no $8 an hour!" said Lindsey Webb, 52, who,
like Mr. Evans, was one of hundreds laid off when Meridian Automotive Systems
closed its local plant. On a recent night, Mr. Webb was helping out in a
trailer in front of the old factory, a vigil by the United Steelworkers Union
to remind the company of its obligations to former workers.
Mr. Webb, who worked at the plant for 33 years, made more than $16 an hour
doing machine maintenance. Now he is thinking of moving to Arizona, taking
along his elderly father, whom he helps care for.
Darrel McKenzie, 44, was also a maintenance man at Meridian and grossed
more than $60,000 a year. Now he has restarted at the bottom as a union
pipe-fitting apprentice and expects to make $20,000 this year. His family just
"does less," Mr. McKenzie said.
Mr. Evans said that moving back into the home where he grew up, after
decades of independence, was a stinging reminder that "I lost everything I
worked for all my life."
His mother, Shirley Sheline, 73, had worked 28 years at the same auto parts
plant, and shares his dismay. "Can you believe it, a grown man forced to move
back with his mother," she said.
Seeing his desperation last year, she added a room to her house with a
separate door.
"I don't know what I'd have done without my mom," Mr. Evans said. "At least
I can help her, or if I get back on my feet, she can rent it out."
By contrast, selling his Harley, which he would have paid off this year,
was pure torture. He had owned a Harley since he was 20, and weekend cruising
with pals was his favorite recreation.
"The buyer said he wanted to take it away in the back of a trailer," Mr.
Evans recalled, "and I said, 'That won't happen.' "
"Instead I drove it to his house, threw him the keys, came home and got
drunk."
----- Original Message -----
From: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 12:52 PM
Subject: [Futurework] Boom or/and Bust
Nickeled and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich The Boom was a Bust for Ordinary
People "So thoroughly is the economy decoupled from ordinary experience that
according to a CNN poll, 57% of Americans thought we were already in a
recession a month ago. Economists may complain that this is only because the
public is ignorant of the technical definition of a recession, which specifies
at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth. But most of the public
employs the more colloquial definition of a recession, which is hard times. And
- far removed from whatever happens on Wall Street, the Nikkei, Dax, or the
curiously named FTSE - most Americans have been living in their own personal
recession for years. I could see this when I was doing research for a book on
white-collar unemployment in 2004. Although the economy was officially on an
upturn, I met laid-off people who'd been searching for a job for more than a
year and often ended up - after selling their homes and borrowing from
relatives - taking low-wage work as big-box sales clerks or even janitors."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102828.html
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