Stand Against Social Injustice:
An Interview with Julie Starr

Aired August 18, 1999

David C. Barnett–Joining us on the phone is another person with first-hand experience of the changing face of welfare. Julie Starr lives several counties to our west, Sandusky County, to be specific, in the town of Fremont. Her experiences in the welfare system led her to found a group called Stand Against Social Injustice. Good morning, Julie Starr.

Julie Star–Good morning.

DCB–First of all, can you tell us how you came to go onto public assistance?

JS–Well, I started college in the fall of '96, and I was originally told that as long as I was going to school full-time, that I'd only have to work eight welfare hours per week, and that was doable. I found out that with all the new changes and welfare reforms, that as of April of '96, they changed my work schedule and I had to start working 20 hours per week for the county, and with going to school full-time and working 20 hours a week, and it just hit me completely out of the blue.

DCB–Before this, though, what were your personal circumstances that you had to even go on this system?

JS–Oh, I have a degree in electronics, and the position that I was in ended, and there just was nothing else in this area in electronics, I've worked with the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services, and I just wasn't finding anything I electronics, so I needed to go back to school to retrain.

DCB–OK.

JS–And I found out that they just wanted me to work way too many hours and still be able to keep up with my family, to go to school full-time, I was trying to do two degree programs in two years' time, and could've done that, but with the added work hours, there was just no way to do that and be able to keep going to school full-time. Well, then we started hearing they were going to raise the hours to 30 hours a week, and we started hearing 40, and I thought they just can't possibly if people are going to be able to work 40 hours a week for free and still be able to go to school, so I started doing some research online, I'm a computer major, or was, and I found the Institute for Women's Policy Research on the Internet, and they have an online forum, there was about 900 people at the time, and I posted my story, and tried to get some information on, you know, is this going to change, what's going on with welfare reforms, and I got e-mail back from Mark Cohen, the senior staff attorney at the Welfare Law Center in New York City, and found out that in Sandusky County, they were going to be requiring everybody to work 40 hours a week for their welfare checks, irregardless of how much their checks were, and that it was violating state minimum wage laws and the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

DCB–This was something Sandusky County was doing on its own accord?

JS–Well, everything's different from county to county. The federal law at the time required 20 hours of work per week. The state of Ohio required 30. Sandusky County decided to take it to the full 40, and we went ahead-Mark Cohen found the Equal Justice Foundation in Toledo, Ohio, and contacted Bill Sunhouser there, who was going to be doing the litigation should we need to take this to class action and still will. We're still hoping to get this into federal court because we're still finding minimum wage violations, and they sent a letter to the attorneys for the Ohio Department of human Services calling for a moratorium on assigning workfare hours until they could develop a policy that comply with minimum wage laws. Supposedly the state has done that, but, like I said, we're still finding violations.

DCB–How did it come that this group, Stand Against Social Injustice, was formed? This is your own idea, or what?

JS–This is my idea. Yeah, it just kind of happened (laughs). I've never been one to be politically-minded, but the whole thing is just crazy.

DCB–One of the issues you brought up recently, I think earlier this month you had a rally with people testifying to this situation we just heard about, about sanctions, somebody going through sanctions. What are you doing in those regards?

JS–Well, we are an affiliate of the state organization, the Ohio Empowerment Coalition now out of Cincinnati. Someone hooked me up with them online. Most of what I've done is through meeting people online and just organizing with other people, and we started working with the Ohio Empowerment Coalition, and they did a sanctions survey, oh, we've been working on it for over a year now, and we're finding that most of the problems with people being sanctioned and having problems are simply paperwork problems and miscommunications. We've been working, lobbying down in Columbus, House Bill 793 was Ohio Empowerment Coalition's, they're the ones that wrote the bill. We've been lobbying with state representatives and senators down in Columbus,. And most of our bills, luckily, were passed. They're supposedly going to be restoring the support services for sanctions, and lightening the sanctions up.

DCB–Julie Starr lives in Sandusky County, where she is founder and executive director of Stand Against Social Injustice. Thanks for telling us your story.

JS–Thank you.

DCB–This is INFOhio After Nine.