Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A glimpse of the future?
The New York Times takes a look at how people have fared since one Ohio business closed its doors a year ago. The results are not encouraging.
With more education and skills, the approximately 35 salaried employees at Manchester, including engineers, accountants and other office workers, appear to have fared better than their hourly counterparts. About a third were asked to stay on at least several more months with Kennametal; several remain with the company. In all, some 40 percent of them appear to be earning a regular paycheck, according to interviews.After thirty years of Reaganite destruction, this country faces a long hard path to rebuild.
Among the hourly workers, at least four who did manage to find jobs were laid off a second time recently because of the slowing economy. Even the lucky few who are still working typically found they had to accept a significant decrease in pay.
Unemployment insurance has proved to be a critical bridge for those who remain jobless. But the regular checks also prevented many from considering lower-paying jobs, once they calculated that they would be earning roughly the same amount.
Nonetheless, it is slowly sinking in that the middle-class lives they constructed at Manchester, in this suburb of Akron, may now be slipping from their grasp.
“I think it’s gone forever for a lot of people,” said John Foss, 50, who worked at the plant for 13 years, most recently as a stockroom clerk, and remains jobless.
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