Ohio Town Sees Public Job as Only Route to Middle Class

[NeoConsSuck]

Source: NY Times

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 and 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 makes 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 unions, 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.”



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/us/16ohio.html?hp

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This is a good story. It's really about how the middle class is disappearing, right after all their jobs were shipped overseas to increase Wall Street profits.

[Iris]

1. As someone said here recently in response to an anti-government workers rant, "Government workers

ARE the middle class."

[MadMaddie]

3. We also need to remind those that forget

these government workers are tax payers too. Unlike Exxon Mobile who paid 0 in taxes in 2009.

[MadMaddie]

2. That is why the Repugs are out to destroy these jobs

they want to ensure no one else moves up. Remember their mantra, "pull your self up by your bootstraps"? Well the people like Junior who were saying it were never low or middle class.

[hollowdweller]

4. I'm about 40 min from Gallipolis

It's like that on both sides of the river. The main jobs are telemarketer, security guard and cashier.

[raccoon]

5. K&R. nt

[txlibdem]

7. Ditto the K&R. When do we reach our breaking point?

The corporations and the rich get all the tax breaks and the bailouts. The poor and middle class gets the bill. Nice.

[raccoon]

6. Good article, especially this:

"...Brynna Frazier, 30,...a waitress, has not had health insurance in any job she has ever worked, including Wal-Mart, Taco Bell and a telemarketing firm.

A third of all private-sector workers under 30 have no health insurance, up from 15 percent in 1988, according to the census data."

And a lot of them over 30 don't have it either.