Lockout takes toll on families with children
By Carrie Whitaker
Staff Writer
Each morning Mavis Back rises, brews a pot of coffee and sits down at her computer.
Generally, she’s online for an hour or two, searching for a job.
Her husband, Jerry, also searches.
One morning, a head hunter called. The job — $35 an hour — sounded great.
Until she learned the position was with AK Steel.
The position she held before AK locked her out of Middletown Works.
“You realize you’re replacing me?” Mavis Back asked the head hunter.
The Backs are two of the more than 2,000 hourly workers still on unemployment nearly six months after the lockout began.
Jobless benefits — roughly $700 a week combined for the couple — stop at the end of September.
The Backs live in a comfortable Lebanon home, with their 15-year-old son, John Derek Shafer. They have a garden, plenty of pets and until recently, little worry, Mavis Back said.
She has been with AK for 28 years, spending her first 16 at the steelmaker’s Ashland, Ky. plant. Jerry Back has 12 years with the company.
In fact, they met at Middletown Works. On their first date, Jerry made dinner on one of the plant’s hot coils.
Their son will be a freshman at Middletown Christian School this fall. There’s a possibility the school will help students with parents mired in the lockout, principal Mark Spradling said.
“Our enrollment is down, partially because of AK,” Spradling said. “We are working with those families — we don’t want them to lose out.”
The Backs are waiting.
“People tell me it doesn’t exist, but I’d just like to work some place that really appreciates people,” Mavis Back said. “This company has failed to realize that their employees are their most valuable resource.”
To which her husband added, “Not just parts.”
‘You can’t let that place ruin your life’
Gary Hollon is a locked out AK machinist. He and his family consider themselves luckier than others. Hollon started a job in June with Dedicated Logistics in West Chester, transporting auto parts.
Hollon is one of about 500 workers who have either sought other employment or retired.
Gary’s wife, Anita, said the family prepared early. She’s proud of her husband for doing what he had to do to keep stability for their home.
“You can’t let that place ruin your life,” Anita Hollon said. “(Another job) might not be a job that you want, but a lot of people go to jobs they don’t like.”
Gary Hollon’s new job pays him about $2 less an hour than what he made at Middletown Works, he said.
The couple love to ride Harley-Davidson bikes, but sold Anita’s hog in anticipation of the lockout. They don’t go out to Rocky Fort, Ohio for long weekends any more.
“There are other things that are more important this year,” Anita said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2845 or cwhitaker@coxohio.com.
