Valerie Schultz: Layoffs -- the waiting isn't the hardest part, but it's close
| Wednesday, Sep 16 2009 03:20 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Sep 16 2009 03:22 PM
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Certified mail is a rarity in our house. Our business affairs are not nearly pressing enough to require such elaborate arrangements. So I went last May to the post office to sign for and pick up the item addressed specifically to me with a certain amount of pleasant anticipation.
Imagine my exactly-opposite-of-pleasant surprise when I read, at the top of the one-page letter, "EMPLOYEE NOTICE OF LAYOFF". I had been identified for elimination, the letter said. I'd made a special trip for this?
It was sad but true: California state workers who had been employed for less that 15 months were facing layoff. My length of state service, as of the date of the notice, was 141/2 months. It's just been that kind of a year.
Initially, four people in my office had received a preliminary letter back in February, warning us that our days as state employees might be numbered. Then we each got the for-real, no-fooling letter. We were told we had, at most, 120 days until our last day. We had by then formed a kind of mutual-support society, at first joking about what we were going to do with all the wonderful free time that would be forthcoming, and eventually asking each other how much we knew about applying for unemployment benefits. Ours was not really a fun club to be a member of, which too many Americans understand firsthand.
A layoff letter brings fear into your brain. The specter of 120 days to get ready to lose your income haunts your waking and sleeping hours. You run the numbers in your head, and they never add up favorably. You try to find things to cut out of your budget, but it's not like you can sell your yacht. You have to consider seriously how you can lower your mortgage or your rent, your car payment, your utility bills, and your most inconsequential monthly expenses. If you're a single mother, you have the added stress of losing not only your paycheck, but your family's health insurance as well.
Looking for another job is almost silly in an economy that is shedding jobs like a sheepdog's fur in summer. It is especially tricky if you live in a small town and have already been laid off by the town's major employer. Most other jobs are part-time and lower-paying, on top of which they are practically nonexistent. Going back to school to learn another livelihood would be an option, if there were a local college. Besides, who is going to loan money to someone who is out of work?
All in all, an ugly, daunting prospect.
Throughout late spring and early summer, my co-workers and I watched as the controversy over the state budget worsened, as negotiations deteriorated, and as hard feelings and low prospects mushroomed out of Sacramento. We were hit with furlough days: one, then two, now three. Our paychecks were about 15 percent smaller, but those of us on the layoff list still worried that they were soon to be 100 percent smaller. About 100 days into our 120 days, we received word that the layoffs were not going to affect any of the state prisons in Kern County after all; at least, not yet. We have been granted a reprieve, if only until the end of the year. We have stepped back from the edge. We still have our jobs. We are lucky.
The unlucky ones in other counties are packing up their family photos and personal items. They are looking for work and applying for unemployment and economizing deeply as they join the thousands of other laid-off Californians. For them, life has just gotten a lot harder.
A job is a terrible thing to lose.
