Oregon Public Broadcasting

2000 people live in Burns Oregon, two hours east of Bend, in Harney County.

The raw unemployment rate in the region is 21.5 percent.

So, of the 10 people eating lunch at the local truck stop on the west end of town, at least 2, statistically, could be out of work.

Mike Rust

Mike Rust is one of them.

He sits in the diner with a letter -- his latest bit of bad news.

Mike Rust: “Yeah, we were hoping to get the insurance reinstated, well, if I we can’t, we’ll get by – the lord will help me.”

The paper spells out that he and his wife aren’t eligible for extended health benefits from his previous job, because it wasn’t a union gig.

Rust is 61. He’s been out of work since October.

And he’s been hurt by many factors, including the recession and a weakening of labor unions.

Rust grew up along the green banks of the McKenzie River, and assumed he’d work in the forests his whole life.

When the logging business collapsed, he shifted over to building natural gas pipelines.

Mike Rust: “Well, I liken it to working in the woods – except a lot of them time there aren’t many trees, there’s just a lot of dirt and a lot of mud. I belong to a laborers’ union and they had that type of work going on, and I don’t like working inside – I like working outside.”

And for decades, the job was a good one. He worked all over, from the rainy Pacific Northwest, all the way to the snowy Rocky Mountains.

Mike Rust: “And we had to go out in blizzards. And we actually got snowed in on the pipeline.”

On the jobs farther away, he would truck his little fifth-wheel out there, and work for months at a time, in all conditions, including the winter.

Mike Rust: “Well, it wasn’t exactly the most fun. But I stuck it out – I was the oldest guy on the crew, and I picked up 90 pound sand bags all day to feed the sand blast pots. I couldn’t see -- I had ski goggles on after my safety glasses blew off and I couldn’t see.”

When the natural gas business was booming, and pipeline construction teams snaked across the country, Rust worked a bunch in Wyoming and that seemed far away.

Mike Rust: “Anyway, in Rawlins Wyoming, if the wind is only blowing 30 miles per hour, that’s a nice day.”

But now, Rust dreams of working in Wyoming.

Slumping energy prices and the credit crunch have slowed a lot of the pipeline projects. in that part of the country.

That’s left a lot of people like Rust looking for work – and the health benefits that go along with the job.

When Rust is working, he says the union insures him – but that goes away when he’s out of work.

His wife is a fragile diabetic.

The last project he was on, she had a scare. She was transported to the Bend hospital, 100 miles away, where her toes were amputated.

Now, he has thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills and no current insurance.

Mike Rust: “So far, I’ve been lucky, I haven’t gotten sick. But, we’re as they say, running naked.”

In order to stop running, Rust is widening his job search – and looking for jobs as far east as Missouri.

And even though he is 61, Rust says he hasn’t saved anywhere near enough for a retirement.

In fact, he recently started training to work as a pipeline inspector – so that his so-called “retirement” could just be working an easier job on the same projects.