Thu, Nov 26 2009
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DRIVING FOR DOLLARS Commuters find more job opportunities, better pay outside county By CARL E. FEATHER - Lifestyle Editor - cfeather@starbeacon.comStar Beacon Frank Taggart of Ashtabula is one of the other three men who car-pool with Fazio. Taggart worked 27 years for an Ashtabula plastics manufacturer before he decided to seek higher wages outside the county. With a daughter heading to college, Taggart needed to earn more money. He told his local employer that he was looking at other opportunities, but that didn’t result in a better offer.
“I guess my experience didn’t count,” he says. He applied for a job with Day-Glow and was hired immediately. Taggart says the move resulted in a doubling of his wages. Although it means an extra 10 hours a week on the road and driving the course five times every four weeks, it’s worth it to Taggart. “Financially, it’s not here at all,” he says of the job opportunities in Ashtabula County. Roy Allen of Kingsville also found better wages by heading west, but the sacrifice is grueling. Allen, 50, is an operator at FirstEnergy’s Eastlake Power Plant. He and three others from Ashtabula County who work at the plant car-pool together from a lot near the Geneva I-90 interchange. On an average afternoon, there are two dozen or more cars parked in the lot. At least that many are in the lot at Route 45 and I-90. The workers cram into a four-cylinder vehicle for the 45-minute commute. Allen has to leave his house shortly after 5 a.m. to make it to work by 7 a.m. Formerly employed at P&C Dock in Conneaut, Allen tired of working without a contract and of unsuccessful negotiations with the new owner. He decided to return to his previous employer, although it meant a fivefold increase in drive time. “Money and benefits,” he says. Although utility companies are among the highest-paying employers in the region, Allen says his annual wages place him in the lower-middle-class category. Further, workers are increasingly being asked to shoulder more of the costs of health insurance and other benefits. He wonders how breadwinners who work in Ashtabula County, where per capita income is thousands less than in Lake County, make ends meet. “I feel fortunate; I have a good-paying job,” he says. “It’s a shame that the blue-collar worker does not fit into that (middle-class) category any longer. They have carried this country on their backs. I don’t know how they can raise their families. If they have a couple of kids, they are really scrambling to feed them.” Fazio says the better wages in Cuyahoga County also make it worth it for him, but the rising cost of gasoline is whittling away at the margin. Allen says gasoline and vehicle depreciation costs are also pinching the four FirstEnergy workers. “We’re talking about buying motorcycles,” Allen says. Dave, a commuter who makes the trip to Mentor every day, says he’s paying between $15 and $18 a day to keep his old car running and put gas in it to go to work. Formerly self-employed, the 47-year-old Ashtabula Township resident says he unsuccessfully looked for work for six months in Ashtabula County before a Mentor company gave him a chance. “The ads in the paper are all for low-paying jobs,” Dave says. “I’m a single guy and need make enough to pay the mortgage and my (living) expenses. Those $6, $7 an hour jobs are pretty much out of the question for me.” Employed in Mentor for the past 21⁄2 years, Dave says he notices the same cars and license plates as he heads west on I-90 between 6 and 7 a.m. He’d like to connect with one or two of those commuters who would share the cost. He’s has run ads in the classified section, but the only responses he received were from people who thought he was offering them a job to drive him to work. 
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