For union families, a loss of value beyond bank
accounts
By Amy Gardner
The Washington Post
Monday, April 18, 7:10 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-union-
families-a-loss-of-value-beyond-bank-accounts/2011/03/
25/AFfRZDzD_print.html

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Judy and Jim Embree, an operating room
nurse and paramedic and firefighter, were attending a
rally at the state Capitol when they discovered that
everything they thought to be good and right about
their lives was, to an alarming number of people,
completely wrong.

The people who showed up that day in support of a plan,
since adopted, to cut the power and benefits of
public-sector unions said that people like them were
the problem. That their "high wages" and "exorbitant
pensions" were crippling cities and counties across
Ohio. Some, even, said their jobs were unnecessary.

It had never occurred to the Embrees that firefighters
and nurses could be unnecessary. They thought of
themselves as linchpins of the community -- and one of
the biggest rewards of their jobs was knowing that the
rest of the world thought so, too.

"Kids go trick or treating in firemen's costumes," Jim
Embree, 48, said. "Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts come and
take tours and sit in the truck and blow the horn.
People talk to you in the grocery store. I'm used to
positive interactions with people. So it shocked me. To
hear people speak in a public venue like I'm a
Rockefeller . . . it shocked me."

In heated debates in Ohio, as well as Wisconsin,
Indiana, New York and other budget-strapped states,
unions and the benefits their workers receive have
become emblematic of the fiscal excesses of
governments. Governors and legislators, with the vocal
support of large blocs of voters, have sought to curb
the escalating cost of salaries, pension and health
benefits that have ballooned budgets across the
country.

Those efforts, and the resulting restrictions on unions
and their workers, have ripped apart how many public
workers think of themselves and their role in society.
The effect is doubly so for families like the Embrees,
with two union workers and a shared identity wrapped
around their jobs.

There's no data here to show just how many of those
families there are, but they're not hard to find. At
Canal Winchester Middle School southeast of Columbus,
an unofficial poll of employees gathered in the library
on a recent school day found seven spouses of other
public workers: a librarian married to a firefighter;
an eighth-grade math teacher married to a court
bailiff; a gym teacher married to a sixth-grade
teacher; and so on.

One of those was Heather Baugess, 44, a librarian
married to a firefighter. Baugess said she was less
upset about proposals that would require her to work
longer and receive less when she retires than she is
about how people view her and her husband.

"It's not the money," said Baugess, who earns about
$60,000 and whose husband, Larry, earns a bit more.
"We're comfortable. It's the teacher-bashing. It's the
negativity. I guess I live in my own perfect would
where everybody supports teachers and everybody
supports firefighters. I don't want that to change."

<For the full article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-union-families-a-loss-of-value-beyond-bank-accounts/2011/03/
25/AFfRZDzD_print.html>

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