This blog is about the effects of the recession on the working and those working on getting work, like me. Having been laid off in July, I am obsessed with the phenomena of having a job and what going with out one does to you. Here the employed and unemployed in all their diversity share tales about temporary work, job envy, government assistance, anxiety, boredom, the meaning of life, etc.
Re “Despite Signs of Recovery, Chronic Joblessness Rises” (“The New Poor” series, front page, Feb. 21):
You write, “Call them the new poor.” That might just be me. I’ve worked all my life for companies with management that wouldn’t know loyalty if it bit them.
Layoffs, new jobs and career changes have been the American way for decades. So, this long period of joblessness should be no surprise — but the “let them eat cake” attitude coming from government is.
You quote Allen Sinai, the chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics, as saying: “American business is about maximizing shareholder value. You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”
If that’s how business defines profits, then we desperately need to redefine our priorities and our business laws. Deregulation has made us a lawless society again. It seems as if we have rebuilt a new robber-baron class that feeds on an ever-growing population of poor people. If this is the New American Dream, would someone please wake me up?
John Thomas Ellis
Kentfield, Calif., Feb. 24, 2010
To the Editor:
In a workshop for the recently unemployed and long-term unemployed, the first question asked by the instructor was “Why do we work?” The responses were obvious: income, benefits, self-esteem, satisfaction and planning for the future. The response the instructor wanted to convey was not as obvious. The instructor explained that “work is something to do — work is a place to go each day.”
In addition to the devastating loss of income and benefits, the recession has created a different kind of loss, loss that does not have a monetary value. The unemployed have lost a sense of place, a sense of belonging and a sense of permanence.
Such loss has been replaced by not having clear purpose and direction, by not having social interaction with people and by not knowing what the weeks, months and years ahead will bring.
While the economic recovery may be a sign of progress, it will come with enduring memories of great hardship.
Harold Langus
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Feb. 22, 2010
To the Editor:
In the 1960s, it was predicted that automation would radically change the job market, and it was suggested by some that we plan then to shift more to service jobs as well as prepare for increased leisure hours, to ease the inevitable socioeconomic transition.
Instead, the hours of today’s working class have greatly increased, and salaries have not kept pace.
The wealthy, however, a class that has greatly increased in both size and assets, enjoy the benefits of automation and of having funds for entertainment and for hiring help to free even more of their time.
Given these realities, it seems unrealistic to look only at financing more jobs. We must be honest about the situation, and we must address the increase in service-sector jobs with appropriate training and the corresponding need for increased pay for those jobs from those most able to afford it.
Failure to address this imbalance is leading us toward a modern form of serfdom.
Diana Morley
Talent, Ore., Feb. 21, 2010
To the Editor:
The well-reported article about the economic effects of unemployment did not spend enough time on one of the real problems that people face today, whether holding a job or living on a fixed income, as Jean Eisen is doing with her husband. With approximately $19,000 a year from her husband’s disability, Ms. Eisen said she feared becoming homeless.
How is it that in much of America a decent apartment can’t be found for less than $1,000? Maybe what Ms. Eisen and millions of others need in addition to a job is more affordable housing.
Originally published on the Working In These Times website
I first met Jose Naranjero* this July in a dusty little Mexican town called Naco, which lies just across the border wall from Bisbee, Arizona. I'd been working nearby as a volunteer for No More Deaths, a Tucson-based group that tries to help immigrants passing through the dangerous Sonoran desert. I was part of a team that left supplies of food and water out for them, in places where many previous border crossers have gotten lost and then perished from hunger, thirst, dehydration, or other hazards.
In Naco, I retraced the steps of many such job-seekers to the door of an immigrant resource center run by folks from Bisbee. This center provides temporary assistance to people dumped backed in Mexico, after being collared by the U.S. Border Patrol. On my second day working in this tiny, crowded facility, two friends of Jose Naranjero showed up looking for him. All three men had tried to enter the U.S. but had the bad luck to run into "la migra."
As Jose's fellow travelers sipped the black coffee that the center offers, they spoke shyly, in a slow, stilted kind of Spanish. Coming from the distant Yucatan, their first language is Maya. They had last seen Jose while they were all still in custody at the Border Patrol detention center in Bisbee. They feared that their friend might be in more than the usual amount of trouble; he had been issued a black wristband, usually a sign that the wearer is suspected of being a convicted criminal or a documented repeat violator of US immigration laws.
Within 24 hours the missing man had been located and Jose himself came into the center accompanied by his two friends. He had been released by the Border Patrol at midnight and, immediately, all three compañeros tried to slip back into the U.S., with no more success than before. With a wide brown face and a big smile, Jose told me he was headed for my own adopted city of San Francisco, where he had work waiting for him as a line cook at an Italian restaurant. He had decided to leave that job briefly and return to Mexico to see his family. Like many others who visited the center, he had assumed, mistakenly, that it would be as easy to get back into the US now it was several years ago.
On each subsequent night that I spent in Naco, Jose and his friends tried again to enter Arizona. And each time, they were caught, returned to Mexico, and showed up back at the resource center in time for coffee and a hot cup of noodles the next morning, saying "Hola, Alexandra!" "Otra vez?" I would ask, and they would nod and we would all laugh at the absurdity of this daily cycle of activity. Jose taught me a few words in Maya and we made a pact that if he did succeed in getting back to San Francisco, we would meet up again to exchange English lessons for continued tutoring in Maya. When I left Naco a few days later to catch a flight back to California, I seriously doubted I would ever see Jose again.
Yet, two days after I arrived back home, I got a call on my cell phone and heard a familiar "Hola, Alexandra." It was Jose. He was back in the Bay Area, but not without the scars and debts accumulated during his latest passage. He had fractured his foot, but nevertheless returned immediately to his chamba (Mexican slang for work) at the same Italian restaurant where he had cooked before. Only now, he owed five thousand dollars to the coyotes who had finally smuggled him across the border successfully and he was desperate to find a second full-time job so he could pay them off faster.
We met for his first English lesson, the focus of which was "vocabulary for the job seeker." Jose had me write down what "Help Wanted" looked like in English. He asked me how to say, " Are you hiring?" and, to assert with confidence: "I can cook pizza and salad, and clean." We also reviewed key words that would help him better understand the barked commands and impatient questions of his current jefe -- like "sweep the floor" and "are you done yet?" Jose attended ESL classes at S.F. City College at my suggestion, but he soon stopped so he could devote more time to finding a second job and the extra money he and so many others need to send back home. As he explained that mission: "We are here for a short time, just to work. We want to get back to our families." Jose often asked about my own family in Massachusetts. He was baffled that I willingly chose to live so far away from them, when there was apparently no economic need for us to be separated.
One day on his way to work, a few months after his difficult return to San Francisco, Jose had an experience that truly spooked him. As he recounted it to me, he saw a woman walking toward him on a downtown street who was as one of the Border Patrol agents that nabbed him and his friends prior to his successful return to the U.S. The woman stopped and said, "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" Jose replied with a mumbled, "No," and tried to walk away quickly. But the woman persisted: "I do know you. I caught you in Arizona. . . . Well, I am happy to see you here. How are you doing? Are you working?"
Already scared and shaken by this bizarre encounter, Jose didn't tell her that he was working illegally in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant nearby. If this woman was so "happy" to see him in San Francisco, why did she and her co-workers make it so hard for him to get back there?
Jose's run-in with this off-duty member of la migra reminded him of all the other times he had felt afraid in our country, like when he was riding a city bus and San Francisco police officers came aboard to check bus passes or remove rowdy passengers. We both had met a man in Naco who had lived in the Bay Area with his family for 20 years; one day, on his way to work, he was pulled over for a routine traffic violation, detained, and then deported. For Jose and many other undocumented workers, San Francisco is not always the "sanctuary city" it claims to be.
After months of searching, Jose called one day to report that he had finally found additional employment at a "restaurante de sushi." A friend of a friend was already working there so Jose was happy to join a kitchen crew of "puros Mexicanos." Now, he prepares pizza and salad six evenings a week in his original job and sushi rice and chicken teriyaki, five days a week, on a morning shift at his second job. He has very little time to sleep between jobs and only one day a week to do his laundry and other chores. But he is grateful to be earning two paychecks. Now he has no time to improve his English or have any kind of fun, and his experience of this great city is so different from the young people I know who have the time and resources to enjoy themselves, whether they are employed or unemployed.
I try to regard my current unemployment, which has not lasted 6 months, as a chance to use my free time to help people like Jose, even if I can't get hired to do it. No More Deaths, ESL tutoring programs, and all the rest of the "non-profit" world are not exactly flush with "stimulus" money these days. Since leaving Arizona last summer and walking San Francisco's streets since then, with resume in hand, the basic injustice of our economic system -- in which so many people, whether native- or foreign-born, have to struggle so hard just to make a living -- is clearer to me than ever before. In my own quest for employment, I've endured scrutiny and then rejection by potential employers many times, whether face-to-face, over the phone, or via the internet. I know I'm not alone in feeling this but the experience of joblessness makes me anxious and doubtful about my own worth.
But at least I don't have to watch my back every moment like Jose does. For Jose, the pursuit of "Help Wanted" ads in California has already taken him across a very hazardous stretch of an increasingly militarized international border, on multiple occasions. He has left his family, risked his life and health, and willingly accepted the difficult and precarious job conditions that go with being undocumented.
In America and Mexico, deeply flawed "labor markets" have left Jose and me and millions of others in a place we don't want to be, whether it's on an unemployment line or working illegally far from home.
By Me Originally printed October 8, 2009 by the Progressive Media Project.
I’m glad to hear that the stock market is up. But, frankly, my own household doesn’t feel it.
My under-30 partner and I don’t own any stocks, so we’re not benefiting from Wall Street’s recovery. We’re both still jobless and searching for full-time work — in my case, for three months now and, in his case, for much longer.
We’re almost on the verge of leaving the country. At least in a less-developed nation, the cost of living would be lower and we might be able to put our past job experience, bachelor degrees and foreign language skills to better use.
In California, where unemployment reached a 70-year high in August, I have more advantages than many job seekers. I am a U.S. citizen and am able to speak both English and Spanish fluently. I have a computer with Internet access, and so I can spend all day searching Craigslist and checking e-mails from various job search listservs.
Yet I have applied, unsuccessfully, for nearly 50 jobs so far — not even reaching the interview stage in most of them.
I have filled out applications and sent in my resume to become a community organizer, after-school teacher, administrative assistant, personal assistant, baker’s assistant, nanny, women’s shelter desk clerk, coffee shop cashier/barista and a dog walker.
Since I graduated from college just two years ago, I haven’t been working in any industry for very long. My longest stretch of prior employment, since graduation, was 11 months spent in a decent-paying job as a union representative in the Bay Area before I was laid off, along with many others, due to an internal political dispute. (The appearance of the word “union” several times on my resume could explain why I haven’t heard back from some employers.)
I am thankful, of course, for the unemployment check I receive every other week. And for the extra $25 per week tacked on to it as part of the stimulus package. And for the COBRA subsidy, for my health coverage, that was part of the same legislation last winter. But jobless benefits don’t make me feel useful and they won’t last forever; already, many other people around the country have exhausted theirs.
My partner — who comes from El Salvador — has a degree in industrial engineering, but he isn’t eligible for unemployment benefits. His experience mirrors that of many other recent immigrants, with far less education. Working as a day laborer in painting and construction, he’s been left unpaid, on several occasions, by unscrupulous contractors.
So, if this jobless recovery continues, we’re thinking of going back to his country.
Amazingly, it seems there are more opportunities for a do-gooder like me in schools or development projects in poor, tiny El Salvador than here at home.
For millions of us in our 20s and many other unemployed folks, the federal government’s economic stimulus initiatives don’t seem to be trickling down fast enough. We, the unemployed, want to contribute our time, our skills, our ingenuity and our sweat. We could be rebuilding parks, painting murals, tutoring kids or doing lots of other socially useful things — if the government would only create these jobs.
But, instead, Time magazine—in its Sept. 21 cover story — explains “why double-digit unemployment may be here to stay — and how to live with it.”
I’ve lived with it long enough — and that’s why I may not be staying.
My friend, who is also 2 years out of a small liberal arts college and currently in the thralls of an exhilerating love affair with unemployment, sent me this message today. I think it speaks for itself.
1. i had a job interview on the phone. i was in tahoe. i didnt have reception in the house so i had to do it outside, while it was snowing. they liked me and asked me to come to an in-person interview. later that day, i got an email saying that they had just realized they could not fund the position and thus were not hiring for it.
2. something that you should not do - look at all of the places you have applied to, go to their staff pages, and see the people they have hired and how much better (and better looking!!) they are than you. example:
David , Program Associate – Recruitment
David comes to Global Citizen Year with a passion for education, civic engagement, and grassroots organizing. He recently returned from Venezuela, where he served as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. Prior to his time abroad, David worked as a field organizer on the Obama presidential campaign in Missouri and as a legislative staffer in Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congressman Mike Honda’s Washington D.C. offices. He also brings his experience teaching and tutoring at UC Berkeley, the University of the Andes in Venezuela, and public schools in the Bay Area and Washington, D.C.
David holds a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. While in graduate school, David earned Division I All-American honors and served as captain of the track and field team.
