Grand Rapids, Michigan - Like many states and local governments struggling to cut costs, Michigan hopes to replace some government employees with contract workers who will do the same job for less.
Ginny Townsend, 41, took a job in January as a nursing assistant in the state-run home for veterans here.
Technically, she works for a private company that supplies some employees to the veterans home under a state contract. She makes $10 an hour, about half the wage of the public employees working at the facility.
“I love my job, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here,” Ms. Townsend, a former home health care aide, said on a recent afternoon as she cheerfully delivered fruit and a newspaper to an 85-year-old resident in a sun-drenched solarium.
With the national unemployment rate at roughly 9 percent, Ms. Townsend says she feels lucky just to have a job. But on her low wages, she is barely scraping by. She said she was raising four grandchildren under 11 with her unemployed sister and could not support them without the $300 in food stamps she collects every month.
Now, the state wants to dismiss 170 nursing assistants on the public payroll at the veterans home and replace them with more contract workers like Ms. Townsend, prompting a legal dispute and much personal anguish.
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