By MARK TODD - mtodd@starbeacon.com
Star Beacon
NORTH KINGSVILLE —
On a holiday weekend when Americans salute the everyday worker, one Ashtabula County labor union fears it may be an endangered species.
Laborers’ Local 245, headquartered on Route 20 in North Kingsville, sees little joy in today’s Labor Day observance or any day in the near future, for that matter.
“These are gloomy days for us,” said Randall Bates, Local 245 business manager.
The local’s members specialize in industrial and commercial construction projects, such as road- and bridge-building. Contractors tapped for these projects in turn hire the local’s members, but such construction work is increasingly rare in the area, and jobs have dwindled.
“We have 175 members, including retirees,” Bates said. “We’ve lost about 20 percent (of members) within the last year. These are gloomy days for us.”
A lack of local opportunities makes it difficult to recruit young people into the fold, Bates said.
“There’s just no work here in (the county),” he said.
For that reason, laborers are throwing their support and energy behind a new initiative, Build Ohio 2010, which supports federal investment in projects aimed at repairing highways, bridges, schools and water/ sewer distribution systems. The project could help jump-start the ailing local economy, Bates said.
“You can’t spend money until you have money,” he said. “We need to start investing in the state.”
A Build Ohio rally, sponsored by Laborers’ International Union of North America, was planned for Wednesday in Cleveland but has been postponed because of President Obama’s visit to that city on the same day.
Bates is not overly optimistic that policy-makers in Columbus and Washington D.C. will embrace the program or even understand the laborers’ plight.
“There are groups of people who have forgotten us common people,” he said. “We keep proposing the same stuff, but we haven’t seen any change.
“We still have a presence here, and (our) members are still strong,” Bates said. “But we’re disappointed.”
A Local 245 member for 33 years, Bates never has experienced a slump like this, he said.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen it,” Bates said. “It was slow in 1985, but now you don’t see any jobs. It’s been hard. How do you tell someone who’s losing their home that you’ll try to get them some work?”
