When I was a kid growing up in Grand Rapids, everyone’s parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles worked for either GM or Steelcase.

The jobs came with great pay and benefits, including health insurance, a pension and paid vacation. If you landed one of those jobs, you never left. If you worked at GM or Steelcase, you retired from there.

Those days are gone. The jobs have drifted away, along with the benefits. Many took buyouts during the Great Recession, including some of my family members. The community took a hit as these good jobs disappeared.

When I was entering the workforce, I didn’t have the same choices as those who came before me. I worked in roofing for a while, and was lucky to land a job 15 years ago at a family-owned business that remanufactured transmissions, differentials

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