Blue-collar workers are seeing small pay increase

DAYTON — At Slyder’s Tavern, Matt Kazee, a machinist, drank a couple of beers as he waited for burgers to take home for dinner. His tab was about equal to the increase in his take-home pay after President Trump’s tax cut found its way into the nation’s paychecks.

“I have seen a little uptick in my paycheck, about what I expected, about 30 bucks,” said Kazee, who voted twice for President Barack Obama before backing Trump in the 2016 election. “It felt to me about like where things were 15 years ago.”

His underwhelmed reaction was not what Republicans had in mind. The white working-class voters in the industrial Midwest who helped put Trump in the White House are now seeing the extra cash from the tax cut, the president’s signature domestic policy achievement and the foundation for Republican election hopes in November.

But the result has hardly been a windfall, economically or politically. Other workers described their increase as enough for a week’s worth of gas or a couple of gallons of milk, with an additional $40 in a paycheck every two weeks on the high side to $2 a week on the low. Few are complaining, but the working class here is not feeling flush with newfound wealth.

And some are convinced that what the tax cut has given them upfront will ultimately fade.

“He’s pulling out jazz hands and shiny stuff up front and will screw us on the back end,” said Brian Barkalow, a worker at Requarth Lumber, where the Wright Brothers once bought wood for their planes.

In 2016, Trump tapped into similar suspicions, particularly among white men who were crushed by the financial crisis and are clinging to jobs that are being transformed by technology and global competition. He narrowly won Montgomery County, in greater Dayton, the first Republican to do so since 1988.

Republicans will need those voters to return in the fall if they are to maintain control of Congress.

The increase in take-home pay for Kazee was near the top among those for the more than two dozen workers interviewed — at the tavern, the lumberyard, a machine shop, a restaurant and a municipal building — about how the tax cut has affected them. Trump often spoke of how the average worker would receive $2,000 or more, but most workers said they did not expect anything close to that.

“In the blue-collar world, it is about looking to get a little bit more at the end of the week,” said Shandy Cossell, who was seated near Kazee at Slyder’s, where every stool at the bar was filled, mostly with men who work with their hands. The dark wood and neon signs suggested another era in a place where blue-collar workers have been coming since Harry Truman was president.

Several said they were most concerned about the rising cost of healthcare, and others questioned whether getting more money now would mean paying more later.

Rob Wright, a strong supporter of Trump who works in a machine shop, said that the 30 additional dollars he is seeing in his paycheck is “30 a week that the government isn’t seeing.”

“It’s just a little extra money I can count on,” he shrugged. “It’s not going to change my life.” Hard Rock Northfield Park (Cleveland/Akron area) Miami Valley Gaming (Lebanon) Jack Thistledown (Cleveland area) Hollywood Mahoning Hollywood Dayton Belterra Park (Cincinnati area)* Racinos statewide $19.4 $12.3

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