Golden Girls among a cadre of aging part-time government workers
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The wheels of democracy come to a halt every day, around midmorning, when the Golden Girls take their banana break.
The Golden Girls, women who were born in the 1920s and 1930s, work during peak periods every spring and fall in the Allegheny County elections bureau on the sixth floor of the County Office Building, Downtown.
They will come to the end of their spring season early next week when they finish certifying the results of the early returns. And, while their work on the Returns Board may be the flashy part of the job, the bulk of their task is preparing for twice-a-year elections by sending out absentee ballots and sorting all of the paperwork that goes to the polls for use on Election Day.
They exemplify the people nationwide who work temporary jobs, such as Election Day poll workers, that are a vital part of the voting system. Mark Wolosik, the director of elections, said the median age for poll worker employees is 75.
He said many of the people who started working the polls when he joined the election bureau 30 years ago are still there, working two days a year.
"It's the whole country, it's not just us," he said.
A lot of the women who work the polls, and they are mostly women, started when their children went into school. They spent the years raising their families and working on election days.
Now, they have gotten used to spending two days a year with their friends, so that elections have become a paid social outing. The pay: $100 an election.
The Golden Girls, which is the name given to them by the permanent employees, are a special breed of temporary elections workers.
Shirley Malkus, 75, of Baldwin Borough, worked for National City Bank back when it was Integra Bank. Kay Bunger, 82, of Ambridge, was a secretary for Alcoa and PPG. Rose Spec, 84, of Sewickley, was a "one-girl office" for a construction company.
Now, retired from their life's work and from caring for the children they raised, they are seasonal workers who have the winters off so they don't have to go out in the snow and the summers off so they can travel.
"I want to be one of them," said Cathy Guzzi, the manager of absentee ballots and expense accounts, who oversees many of the seasonal workers. "It gets them out of the house. They get extra money for whatever, and they love it."
Most days during the lunch hour, Mrs. Bunger, Mrs. Malkus and Mrs. Spec stay in the office and chat over their meals. Sometimes they go out shopping. Their co-workers, Donna DiMatteo, 70, of Baldwin Township, and Elizabeth Merriman, 76, of Sewickley, spend their lunchtime walking laps around the City-County Building for exercise.
They said they try to all go out to lunch together maybe once every five weeks or so and then, over the summer, they will try to get together at least once. And, of course, they all sit down for their banana breaks every day to keep their potassium levels up.
Mostly, they are there to count, sort and collate. By the middle of next week, they will be done, having made sure the totals of votes cast match the totals of people who voted and that the absentee ballots that might have had coffee spilled on them or were torn in handling were accurately copied onto a version that could be run through a scanner.
They won't be in the building when the tedious task of counting the write-ins begins. That will be left for the year-round staffers, and the elderly temps will return to their regular lives.
Mrs. Bunger will clean her house. Others will travel. They will return to the City-County Building in September to start organizing the general election.
It's not just the money that brings them to work. Mrs. Guzzi said the pay is about $8 an hour.
"We have to love it, or we wouldn't be here," Mrs. DiMatteo said.
Rebecca Droke, Post-GazetteElizabeth Merriman, 76, left, of Sewickley and Donna DiMattio, 70, of Baldwin , Marcella Faust, 72, second from right, of Dormont and Shirley Malkus, 75, of Ambridge are amongst a group of senior citizens called the Golden Girls who organize returns for Allegheny County each fall and spring.
Click photo for larger image.
First Published May 18, 2007 10:46 pm
