Lorain County caseworkers reach day 180 of a strike over a dollar an hour

Monday was the 180th day since about 140 caseworkers at Lorain County Job and Family Services in Elyria, Ohio, walked off the job. The office they left processes Medicaid, food assistance and childcare help for a county of about 323,000 people, and county commissioners have acknowledged that the walkout has built a backlog in claims.

The workers, members of United Auto Workers Local 2192, struck on February 18 after county commissioners declared an impasse in contract talks. Ohio’s State Employment Relations Board ordered mediation in March. It did not produce a contract, and both sides have since filed unfair labor practice charges that the state board could take months to investigate.

The union has put the remaining gap at a dollar an hour. Gina Jones, a caseworker and chairperson of the local’s JFS unit, has put the union’s position the same way for months. “Same demands, $1 plus their pattern,” she told Spectrum News 1 in June, referring to the wage schedule the county has settled with its other bargaining units. “All they have to do is give the workers $1 an hour extra and their retro pay,” she told News 5 Cleveland. “They can end all of this.”

County Commissioner Dave Moore said the county cannot pay it. “It sounds like a low number, but it’s not,” Moore told News 5 Cleveland, citing an $11 million budget deficit. He also said the county is bound by what it has already agreed elsewhere: “These contracts have been approved by other unions. They want more than what the other unions got. They can’t do that.”

What the county offered, and what a fact-finder recommended

Before the walkout, the dispute went through Ohio’s statutory dispute resolution process. Commissioners voted down the report of a neutral fact-finder in January, a step the UAW has called rare in public sector bargaining, then put forward what they described as a “final and best” offer of 12 percent in total wage increases over three years and declared impasse.

Writing in Labor Notes, Philip Althouse reported that the fact-finder had recommended increases of 4.5 percent, 3.5 percent and 4 percent across the three years, and that the union had sought 8 percent a year, citing turnover and a 50 percent rise in health care costs. Althouse also reported that Jones has pointed to county spending on management, saying the number of administrative positions paying six figures rose from 55 in 2021 to 174 in 2025.

The workers on the line administer Ohio Works First, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid, childcare assistance and child support referrals. UAW President Shawn Fain, who joined the picket before the strike deadline, said at the time that “the workforce crisis at Lorain County Jobs and Family Services is a public service crisis.” One caseworker told Cleveland 19 News in the strike’s first week that “we’ve had 90 people leave in the last five years because they can’t afford to work here.”

Sia Markou, a welfare caseworker in the unit, told News 5 Cleveland that some of her colleagues qualify for the benefits they process. “People are on assistance that are working for us,” Markou said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

The backlog outside the office

Commissioner Jeff Riddell acknowledged in June that the walkout “has aggravated a backlog in processing claims,” and said the county had brought in help from elsewhere. “We are grateful to have some help from neighboring counties,” Riddell said in a statement to Spectrum News 1. “But we still want our people on the job servicing their community.”

Residents have reported waits of more than a month on benefit applications and long holds on the phone. Kathleen Janda, director of the Lorain County Free Clinic, told Labor Notes the clinic has seen more requests for pharmacy help from people whose “Medicaid coverage has lapsed due to the strike.”

Roughly 100 workers remain out, down from about 140 at the walkout, and Althouse reported that nine have left for other jobs. Darlene Gray, a strike captain with 23 years on the job, said workers in neighboring Erie County are paid more than she is.

In April, a separate unit of the same local, representing workers at Lorain County Children Services, ratified its own contract, which the UAW said broke the county’s pattern for the first time.

A record the union claims and the local paper could not confirm

At 133 days, Jones said UAW officials had told her the walkout was the longest public sector work stoppage in Ohio history. The Chronicle-Telegram, which reported the claim, wrote that it “couldn’t immediately independently confirm it was a record.”

Jennifer Verda, who has worked in the unit for more than 29 years, told the World Socialist Web Site in July: “We are not going to be taken for granted anymore.”

Jones has said the same about the length of the strike. “They will continue until this is settled,” she told Spectrum News 1 in June. The county’s 12 percent offer still stands as its best and final, the union is still asking for a dollar an hour on top of it, and the unfair labor practice charges filed by both sides remain before the State Employment Relations Board.