ELYRIA, Ohio — United Auto Workers Local 2192 members have been on strike against Lorain County Job and Family Services for over five months, with no resolution in sight. The over 100 UAW case workers walked off the job Feb. 18.
“The county commissioners are all about lining their pockets, they don’t care about the services or poorer people, therefore they don’t respect us,” striker Kathleen Henderson told these Militant correspondents on the picket line July 6. She has been there for 10 years and works with people trying to get Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and medical cash assistance. “Many of us are single moms and have to manage our kids while working a second job. I have only avoided a second job because I don’t have kids and my boyfriend helps support me.”
The county commission has refused to grant a base-rate raise of $1 per hour and a freeze on healthcare cost increases, saying it doesn’t have enough in its budget. Workers’ healthcare costs went up by 50% over the course of the last contract.
Strikers said some of them get wages so low they qualify for the very assistance programs they administer.
Angela Atkinson said when she started working at Job and Family Services, she got $13.59 in wages, and after 20 years she now makes only $23 an hour. She said she stays working because she wants to help people, but like most of her co-workers she has a second job to survive. She serves as a picket captain, also working as an Uber driver.
Her friend and co-worker, Allison Ives, said she helps people get into nursing homes and to get healthcare. “We do this because we want to help people” she said. She works a second job as a bartender.
Most of their jobs require a college degree, but a number of them start out at about $18 per hour.
The continuing refusal of the county commissioners to negotiate a fair contract has triggered a public service crisis and crippled the county’s social safety net.
“Lorain County has been economically depressed since the steel mills and the auto plant shut down years ago,” Ives explained. “For a while, almost every business in downtown Lorain was shuttered.”
“A skeleton crew of supervisors, and some union members who aren’t participating in the strike, are left to manage thousands of cases, adding to a massive backlog that directly impacts vulnerable residents,” she said. “Mandatory home daycare inspections and elder abuse investigations have been cut back and you’re put on hold when you try to reach the office.”
Strikers said they’ve gotten at lot of support. Members and retirees from UAW Local 2000 at the nearby Ford assembly plant come out regularly to join the picket line. UAW Local 2192 from AVI catering in Oberlin has joined the picketing, as well as other unions and community groups.
Support their fight! Join the picket line at 42485 North Ridge Road in Elyria.