This weekend, for the second time in less than a month, Derek Merrin decided the best place to make his case to Northwest Ohio voters was anywhere but Northwest Ohio.
While Merrin spent this past Saturday outside the district he’s running to represent at a rally with his billionaire party bosses, Marcy Kaptur spent the day at home in Toledo at UAW Local 12, hearing directly from the working people she represents.
Kaptur sat down with SEIU members working in nursing and janitorial services, UAW members employed by Toledo-area public schools, and local retirees for a conversation about wages, job security, and the rising cost of groceries, housing, and health care.
Last week, nearly 1,400 Ohio workers lost their jobs at the former Navistar plant in Southwestern Ohio. Just 3 days later, Merrin took the stage at a nearby high school and offered his assessment of how Ohio workers are doing: “Jobs are returning and wages are up.”
Here’s what working people in Northwest Ohio had to say:
Public School Teacher in Toledo:
“Reflecting pool remodels and gold-plated statues and arches and all of this wasted money, while they cut and they cut and they cut. The cuts to education in the state, public education in the state, and throughout the country, has been ridiculous to the point that school districts are having trouble making ends meet and doing the right things for their students.”
SEIU 1 Member:
“What we need to survive, what we need to live — that’s what this is coming down to, and that’s why we have to fight…because they want the rich to survive and us to be depleted. They want us out.”
Union Attendee:
“The entities really that are on welfare are these corporate companies that are taking these tax breaks that aren’t paying into the system that they bitch and complain about families being on assistance, and instead of actually going to the point and attacking where our tax money is coming from, and it’s coming from the working class, and it’s not coming from these billionaires or these companies, and we need it, and we need to make sure that Citizens United gets overturned because they shouldn’t have a voice. We should have a voice.”
Nurse on Strain in Nursing Homes:
“It’s so hard to deal with a lot of times. A lot of days you leave exhausted, tired, and empty.”
Public School Employee and UAW Member:
“I think most of us here are union, so we’re very lucky in the fact that we negotiate our insurance. But we do realize that if others are uninsured, that ends up costing even us in negotiations because somebody is paying for that, and if other people do not go to the doctor’s early on, then it becomes a larger problem and it’s a larger issue that ends up hitting us as union members. […] So it’s hard, you know. That’s why we got to keep unions.”
