Recently, The Record sat down to hear their stories, people recently unemployed ranging from a recent college graduate who held (and lost) three temporary jobs to 50-somethings who thought they were closer to retirement than vocational training.

What becomes immediately clear is that one of the most critical injuries among the unemployed is the emotional impact and painful adjustment that comes with losing a job.

“It has to do with your identity and how you think of yourself,” observed Hagan. “We live in a world where work so much defines us. This can be very hard.”

Several of the Trinity Twelve reported that on an emotionally level, the slow cadence of the economic crisis over the past several years has been as bad as—or perhaps worse than—actually losing their jobs. As they witnessed co-workers and friends around them disappear, they were left to wonder if they were next.

Turns out, they were next. Either called in, escorted out, or in one case, randomly selected for termination, the 12 now share one thing in common. Rather than spending time in their professions of choice, they have become unwitting authorities on navigating systems of survival.

“It seems like every year for the past five years, the company has been trimming the excess off. It eventually became my turn, which was October 30,” said Doug Dubin, a pilot with USA Jet airlines. The company flies auto parts out of Willow Run Airport near Ypsilanti and employed over 150 pilots when Dubin was hired in 2000. The company is down to eight pilots and eight active cargo planes.

“When the auto companies were doing good, we were flying every day. When the auto companies started going down, it was a gradual process, but you could tell,” he said.

Dubin and his fellow pilots noticed a couple of years ago that the company was parking the planes instead of performing maintenance on them. Now, two dozen company planes sit idle and ill-repaired, which only adds to the inertia of a crippled economy.

“Right now, they aren’t good for anything but scrap metal,” Dubin said. “After they’ve been parked for more than a year, there is mold and water in them. The electronics are shot.”

For Dubin—and his wife and three children, ages seven, four and two—job termination meant that life changed dramatically.

“It took a couple of days of asking, ‘what are we going to do?’ You go through different phases and different ways of thinking as you try to make sense of what’s happened,” Dubin said. “It’s been nine years since I was actively looking for a job. It’s like dating again; you have to work your way into it again. And it’s tough to get into that mode of rejection.”

Another shift in thinking hit them more slowly. Rather than a family who could help others, now Dubin’s family needs the help. Once the initial shock subsided, Dubin registered for unemployment, food stamps and WIC, and medical insurance for the children. He’s grown more at ease looking for clothes at a church donation closet and one of the turkeys Trinity gave them for Thanksgiving is still in the freezer for January.

“You find out how hard it is to be poor and all the hoops you have to jump through to get State aid and you’re thankful for the things the community does for you,” Dubin said.

Jane Pearce had a temporary job for a year in accounts payable with an automotive supplier in Taylor. She is
experiencing a similar adjustment and the same emotional response that accompanies unemployment.

“In that year, you could see things dwindle down,” Pearce said. “It’s been a nightmare.” Laid off last October, she said the entire first month afterward was consumed with the paperwork and frustrations of being unemployed.

“I get so disgusted. You try to get help and nobody will help you. Being a single adult—they have nothing for you,” Pearce said. “You begin to feel unwanted. You don’t have a purpose because you aren’t out doing anything.”

“You feel a little embarrassed and wonder ‘did I do something wrong? Why me?’” said Debra Williams, echoing a common feeling among people who suddenly lose their jobs. Williams survived the wave of layoffs at a major pharmaceutical company in Ann Arbor two years ago, but lost her job in October, six weeks shy of 10 years—when she would have qualified for lifetime medical benefits.

“It is not something you expect you will have to go through in your life. And now you are doing it because you have to. You have to survive,” Williams said.

Jim Wangbickler worked in research and development at Ford Motor Company for 14 years when he was laid off last July—two days before he would have hit the 15-year plateau. He said the stress level at Ford has been drama-tic since 2000. Employment benefits, health coverage, and profit sharing shrank while job insecurity escalated.

Since he lost his job, Wangbickler has fallen three months behind in his home mortgage and his rental property is occupied by someone who is also unemployed.

The income Wangbickler counted on from Ford supported a small business—a Biggby coffee shop in Monroe—which he opened three years ago and where his wife, 22-year-old son, and nearly a dozen employees work.

“It’s scary,” he said, knowing that with his principal income gone, his homes and family business, along with the jobs associated with it, are in jeopardy.

Amber Chadwick’s job was also tied into the automotive downturn. Through Manpower, she had a temporary job as the travel coordinator with an automotive engineering company in Troy. But less business and less travel spelled trouble for her position. She was notified one day at 3 p.m. that her job would end at 5, and she was escorted to the parking lot.

Pam Smith, who worked at Con-way Freight for a short while before she was laid off in December, is philosophical about the economic challenges. The company closed 40 services centers, and waves of administrative reshuffling prior to the major layoffs in her office tipped her off, so she wasn’t totally unprepared.

“It’s a freight company, and freight companies aren’t doing well because nobody’s doing well. You don’t push freight when nobody’s buying freight,” Smith said.

“They are trying to streamline business and make it more efficient. I don’t have a problem with this. It is smart business,” she said. “God shut the door and he opened a window, and I’m getting through it and going on.”

Of anyone at Trinity whose job should have been secure, it’s Sue Carpenter. She worked with a nonprofit mental health agency and is trained to help families deal with stress. With the crashing Michigan economy, family stress is clearly a growth industry. But because her team’s grant proposals were dependent on Wayne County tax revenue—and because tax revenues are plummeting with personal incomes—fewer services are being funded at just the time when they are most needed.

“We have no shortage of need for families with multiple difficulties,” Carpenter said. “The major stress on families is financial stress. People take it out on kids, people take it out on each other, and it’s tough. Our work was to try to intervene.”

Formerly Trinity’s director of children’s ministries and interim parish administrator, Carpenter and her team lost the bid on a county contract and her job collapsed.

The pressure on all the social service agencies is overwhelming, but most agencies do not have the ability or the tax base to increase services.

“It’s brutal right now,” Hagan added. “There are so many people out of work that they are not responding very well.” Which, as Trinity’s priest knows, shifts more burden back onto the churches.

“We are used to reaching out and trying to help people; it’s new to us to have so many who are struggling,” Hagan explained.

Trinity is trying to do a number of things to respond and adjust. The church is preparing resources packets to identify where people can find food and assistance with job searches. Hagan met with the Salvation Army, social services and the local school officials to talk about the needs of people who have lost jobs or are threatened with foreclosure.

SEE HERE for information on the
parish's unemployment seminars.

The congregation feels the ripple effect on its own financial planning as well and is trying to conserve money. Trinity has 13 percent fewer pledges for 2009 and the church projects a 16 percent decline in income. Not only does this reduce the ability of Trinity to respond in its community at a time when more is asked of churches, it will impact the level of support that Trinity gives to the diocesan ministry and future budgets as well.

Trinity isn’t the only church in the diocese hard hit by the economic crisis. When its reduction in support for diocesan ministry is multiplied by the number of churches in the diocese, and then factored into a revised formula for diocesan support based on lower levels of church income, the diocesan ministries and budget are already feeling the financial squeeze.

The crisis also affects the spiritual and community life of the congregation, Hagan said. “Every sermon is about hope and strength.”

After the service, even coffee hour chat is changing. The standard salutation “How’s work?” might well be avoided, while tips on mastering Monster, Manpower, Michigan Works!, and CareerBuilders now create the currency of casual conversation.

In fact, when asked what people talk about at church now, Doug Dubin summed it up succinctly: “Do you know anybody hiring?”

COMMENTS:

Dear Editor:

Just ran across your Belleville article on the Episcopal Life site during a Google News search I was doing for something else. Just wanted to offer my compliments. You've captured the kinds of struggles people are going through in our state better than just about anything I've read yet.

Well done!

Matt Ferguson
St. Paul's, Lansing

Dear Editor:

Concerning your lead article in The Record on the economy. There is a new State of Michigan link on health care services available www.michigan.gov/healthcarehelp

Perhaps this will be of help.

Ann Garvin
St. Andrew's, Ann Arbor