Local employers and area natives Steve Hightower, Virgil Maines, Mary Jane Palmer and Tom Swope stand conventional wisdom on its ear on the subject of Middletown’s work ethic and work force. "Middletown is very fortunate," said Palmer, owner of Palmer Temps. "We have highly skilled people who are willing to work hard. I have friends in other areas and they have a much harder time finding good employees. Other communities envy our work force."

Tom Swope, managing member of the Middletown office of Frost Todd Jacobs LLC likes what he sees in the local work force, which he said tends to be very literate and very bright. "There is much ability in the workplace because people who work together tend to get along."

Swope said several of his clients require skilled machinists, maintenance employees or technicians and there is ample supply of this skilled labor in the area. The majority of Palmer Temps’ placements are in technical positions. Palmer estimates 70 percent of the staff she places with area employers hold a college degree.

Skills are more important than ever in today’s workplace, according to Steve Hightower, president and CEO of Hightower Petroleum Company. "Many years ago you could teach people the skills they needed but we are at a point where they have to have those skills sets walking in," he said.

Positions that don’t require a degree require skills and abilities abound in the area’s work force. Virgil Maines’ business, Hamilton Stands, requires entry level workers to assemble music stands. Maines uses temporary agencies to fill openings and finds new hires learn rapidly and are able to move quickly into fulltime positions.

Hightower values ability and drive in his employees and looks beyond whether an applicant has been college-educated. "Everyone has something to offer," Hightower said. "We need to treat those who are not necessarily college-bound the same as those who are and find methods to encourage and train the work force as deliberately as we do those who go to college. I think vocational opportunities are a big part of our society."

Palmer said Middletown’s blue-collar history makes for an excellent pool of workers. "We are hard-working, honest people," she said. "We should be very proud of that."

Swope, who often represents companies with offices both in Middletown and in other locales, said that in some parts of the country there is a Luddite mentality where people don’t want to see innovation. " They don’t want change because they think it might affect the number of employees or the number of members of the union," he said. "I’ve never run into that in Middletown. People here have been open to improvements in the process."

Swope said his own support staff as well as the applicants he sees have excellent clerical skills, good grammar, spelling and computer skills and that has been the case in the more than 30 years he’s practiced law in Middletown. He illustrates this with an example from his early days. "We had a legal secretary, old enough to be my mother, who was a genius," he recalled. "She taught me a lot as a young lawyer. When she retired I thought I’d never find anyone that smart again. But I’ve worked with people since who have been that smart."

Most employees take a sincere interest in the success of the business they are working for, Swope said. He said they welcome new equipment and technology and embrace programs that improve customer service and quality. Many employees are quite innovative, offering ideas to improve the manufacturing or service delivery process.

While Palmer and Hightower acknowledge the national and global trends that affect the work force negatively in general, their own stories and those of their employees belie those trends. "People don’t look at staying on the job for the next 30 years of their life," Hightower said.

Yet, the work ethic seems deeply instilled in Hightower’s own family and his business. Three of his five children work for him as well as brothers and sisters and their children as well. He said any organization that hired one of them would get a good employee with the right work ethic.

Palmer cites examples of recent company scandals in the upper echelons of corporate America that erode the work ethic throughout the chain of command. "Young people see business leaders and government officials getting by without punishment for their behavior and even getting rewarded," she said.

In Middletown, though, Palmer sees a different ethic. "Many families have an Appalachian background and they make up a large part of the work force here," she said. "There is a good sense of family and responsibility."

That sense of family and responsibility are keys to the real story of Middletown’s work force, along with a sense of community and a spirit of cooperation that reaches into all types of businesses and is found at all levels, according to Tom Norwalk, president of Miami Valley Marketing Group of Dayton, who works with the Middletown Economic Development Corporation. Through that work he has gotten to know many area businesses and, more importantly, he said, many of their employees.

"When it comes to work ethic, Middletown really shines," Norwalk said. "Workers in this community have a spirit and a pride in their work that is simply not found in many other locations. It’s one of the many reasons Middletown is such a great community."

Swope said most area businesses he has visited have good esprit de corps. Friendliness and cooperation are the norm and employees are courteous both to each other and to their managers. He said he believes that’s because of the small town nature of the community where people tend not only to work together but also to live together.

"We don’t tend to compartmentalize our lives as much," Swope said. "We are likely to run into people we work with in other settings and we are geographically close so we interact and become friends with people we work with and engage in social activities with them." . He observed that people in Middletown go to the same schools, the same churches, see each other at their children’s sporting and school events and in the supermarket. In company bowling and golf leagues, employees and managers play together.

That cooperation between workers and management extends beyond the playing field. Swope said the well-educated Middletown work force understands that the success of their employer is a benefit to themselves. They are proud of the business they work for and its success, he said.

The civility and teamwork so evident in the area’s work force doesn’t stem from everyone being or thinking alike, either. "It’s not that the work force is all that homogenous," Swope said. "It tends to be pretty diverse with men and women and blacks and whites working together"

Palmer echoes this sentiment. "We have all ethnic backgrounds, German, Irish, Black, Italian and more," she said. "We live and work together and care about each other. That’s what is so great about Middletown. You don’t want your children growing up with only one kind of people. That doesn’t prepare them for the real world."

For employers, the real world that is Middletown’s work force has much to offer: excellent skills, civility in the workplace and a sense of pride in the businesses they represent and something more. Swope said that he is constantly pleased and sometimes surprised by the level of dedication he sees in his support staff. They get to know clients and if someone has a problem getting hold of one of the attorneys staff members go out of their way to make sure contact is made.

"They just consider it their problem if the client has a need," Swope said. He said he encourages this commitment but doesn’t see himself as the source. His employees brought that sense of service into the workplace and constantly improve on it, serving as good examples to one another.