Survivors tell stories of life after layoff

If empty factories are tombs of the old West Michigan economy, a high-tech office at Leonard Street and Ball Avenue NE is like a maternity ward of the new.

That’s the Michigan Works office — the busiest of the five in Kent and Allegan counties — where people like Jim Warner, 44, spend hours mailing resumes, checking e-mails and hoping their next interview delivers a coveted job.

Unemployed since January, Warner, an electrical engineer from Walker, said he has been spending six hours a day at the office — enough for the employees to call him “a regular.”

A typical week involves sending out 150 resumes by mail, another 150 by

e-mail and 100 by fax to employers within a 50-mile radius.

Warner said he is trying to remain optimistic about his job search at a time when the state leads the nation in unemployment claims. He recently moved in with his mother and sister because he couldn’t make rent payments.

“You just can’t sit idly by,” said Warner, who was scouring newspaper classifieds and checking his e-mail through a Michigan Works terminal. He also is taking welding and computer-controlled machinery training classes.

Next week, he has three interviews scheduled.

There are a lot of regulars lately, said Maureen Downer, who oversees Michigan Works offices in Kent and Allegan counties. Her agency had 45,220 local visits s during the last six months of 2004, including 9,388 classified as “new customers.”

“We’re busy and we’ve been busy,” Downer said. “We see vast numbers of people every day.”

Even on Good Friday, traditionally a slow day for the state agency, 80 new “customers” walked through the doors.

A visit to Michigan Works is required for anyone filing a new unemployment claim. The offices provide resume-writing and job-interview training along with free access to the Internet, phones and fax machines to help people get their job search under way.

Many of the 37,440 people looking for jobs in the Grand Rapids and Holland areas during February are finding it takes a lot longer to get a job today than it did a few years ago when the nation was in a recession, Downer said.

That’s reflected in the pessimism Downer sees every day.

“A couple of years ago, there would have been more optimism in people’s outlook,” she said. “Now people don’t have the optimism. They’re seeing our area’s economy is not turning around like other areas of the country are.”

The lack of improvement in the state’s economy at a time when the national outlook seems better frustrates George Erickcek, an analyst for the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo.
Worst in the nation

Michigan’s unemployment rate rose to 7.5 percent during February, while the nation’s rate was 5.4 percent. Unemployment in the Grand Rapids area held at 7.3 percent and Ottawa County stayed at 6.3 percent.

Last week’s announcement that Steelcase will cut another 600 jobs and close its Grand Rapids factories took Erickcek and many others by surprise.

“This is the fourth year of the economic expansion and we’re still seeing these sizable layoffs occur,” Erickcek said. “It is going to be difficult for all of these people coming into the labor market at the same time to find employment at the same wages they are enjoying now.”

Continued job cuts among manufacturers are even more acute in the Grand Rapids and Holland areas, where the percentage of the labor force involved in manufacturing is more than double the national average.

There’s little reason to expect a return to the old days, said Win Irwin, president of the regional Michigan Works board and chief executive of Irwin Seating Co. in Walker.

Free trade agreements and access to low-cost labor outside the United States will continue to eat away at low-skill, non-specialized manufacturing jobs, he said.

“There’s nothing you can do about that,” Irwin said. “There are some industries where you can get what you call a premium and you differentiate yourself with value-added products where you’re not as sensitive to globalization.
Even firms doing well

The market keeps people like Rita Amell busy. As vice president of career management of Right Management Consultants, it’s her job to help get people back to work.

Steelcase, which has returned to profitability and growth after several years of losses, is a good example of what’s happening, she said.

“It’s not just companies that are hemorrhaging,” Amell said. “It’s companies that are apparently doing well. They’re profitable. They’re saying, ‘Where can we do more with less?’”

Programs run by Michigan Works and Right Management can help get some workers off to a new start, but job hunters need to be willing to try new things.

“What people need to do, which is very hard to do, is to be adaptable and flexible to what new opportunities might be out there,” Irwin said. “If you look at what’s out there, the opportunities are not bad. It’s just that we’re shifting from a manufacturing base to a service base.”

For manufacturing employees in their 30s and 40s, Erickcek said the latest round of cuts should fuel their desire to strike out on a new path. Go back to school or get retrained to do something in a less-volatile service or health-care related job, he said.

That’s what Dale Proper of Cedar Springs is doing. Proper, 45, is taking classes to earn his commercial driver’s license. He said he has a job lined up with a small trucking firm.

After losing jobs at Keeler Die Cast and Grand Rapids Die Cast when those companies shut down factories, he figured it was time to carve a new path. He already burned through his retirement savings and is selling a beloved pickup to keep up with bills.

But Proper said he’s optimistic.

“If you look in the paper there are a lot of truck-driver jobs in there,” he said.

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