On the Job-Hunting Road : Kalina Nicolov / ‘Without an Education in the United States, It Is a Dead End’

When Xidex Corp. abruptly closed its Irvine computer disk plant Oct. 14, a state labor market analyst predicted that its 825 workers would soon find new jobs. After all, the analyst said, Orange County had one of the nation’s lowest unemployment rates, its economy was booming and other manufacturers were clamoring for skilled workers. Three months later, job placement and counseling agencies report that many former Xidex workers are still searching for comparable jobs. Several days after the plant closing, The Times asked former Xidex workers Gil Banfill and Kalina Nicolov if they would share their job hunting experiences. The Times accompanied them on job interviews, visits to the Employment Development Department and job counseling sessions. Here are their stories.

In the elevator of a county government building, Kalina Nicolov hugged herself for a moment and shivered.

At the age of 50, she was considering going back to school. She had no doubt it would be the best thing for her to do. But it was scary.

Seven weeks of job hunting had proven frustrating. She had driven from one company to another in a large industrial area near her one-bedroom Tustin apartment and learned that she was unqualified for any kind of job that would pay enough to support her and her son.

Nicolov, one of 825 workers whose jobs were lost when Xidex Corp. abruptly closed its Irvine computer disk plant in October, had come face to face with the biggest problem experienced by many victims of industrial layoffs in Orange County.

To earn a decent living, she was told, she needed to develop new skills through one or more government-funded retraining programs. But to pursue retraining, she needed to figure out how to stay alive.

A refugee from Bulgaria, Nicolov had fought a political battle to come to the United States to be with her son and husband and attempt to build a better life.

Suddenly, that dream seemed to be crumbling.

A year ago, her husband lost his construction job and moved to Las Vegas to drive a taxicab. And in October, Nicolov was thrown out of work when Xidex Corp. abruptly closed its Irvine computer disk manufacturing plant.

“I felt like somebody hit me with something,” said Nicolov, whose wages had increased from $6 an hour to $7.61 during her 4 years as a quality control inspector with Xidex.

“In Communist countries, they never lay off people like that,” she said. “What good is freedom if you can’t do anything about it?”

As she hunted for a new job with companies in the industrial greenbelts of Irvine, she said, she felt like “the only one in America who isn’t rich.”

She worried that she was quickly using up her severance pay and that the $142 in unemployment insurance she received each week wouldn’t go far toward covering expenses.

Nicolov figured that she needed to take home $1,200 a month to cover her $600 rent payment, a $260 car payment and other obligations.

Her greatest fear was that her son, Tresseam, might fall behind or drop out of his classes at Rancho Santiago College. “Without an education in the United States, it is a dead end,” she said.

Since the Xidex plant closed, he had been working after school and weekends to bring in extra money.

And events were forcing Nicolov to think about her own schooling.

An energetic woman who had regularly worked weekends to accumulate overtime at Xidex, Nicolov was itching to work again. Her initial plan was to conquer the job market by applying at every manufacturing firm that was hiring.

“I go out and look at the (hiring) signs and stop and go in. I go and go and keep going.”

But during the second week of her job search, Nicolov pinched a nerve in her back and was laid up for 17 days.

When she resumed her job hunt, the realization sunk in that with her job skills, she was unlikely to land a job paying better than $6 an hour, or $1,040 a month.

And she was handicapped by her shaky command of English and her heavy accent, although less so than many of her former colleagues. At Xidex, most of her co-workers were Cambodians, Vietnamese and Filipinos who spoke less English than she.

She could understand what others said to her, but her grammar was hit or miss. Because she was insecure about her speaking ability, her words were sometimes soft and indistinct.

When she submitted an application at AST Research Inc., a computer manufacturer in Irvine, the security guard made her repeat herself several times until she understood that Nicolov was looking for a job.

To survive in Orange County, Nicolov realized, she would have to become something more than a factory quality control inspector.

She thought of studying massage therapy, a suggestion made by the therapist at the chiropractor’s office where Nicolov sought treatment for her back. But she scrapped that plan after she checked into a private program for teaching physical therapy and learned that the courses would cost thousands of dollars.

Then Nicolov heard about Jobs Plus, a government-financed job placement and occupational training program that has funds to assist people who lose their jobs in plant closures.

She filled out the necessary papers, took English and math tests and was processed into the program through a series of interviews with counselors.

Jobs Plus counselor Carmen Whitegon told Nicolov that the job market was flooded with quality control workers. She could send Nicolov to interview for a job paying no more than $6 an hour.

“You don’t want to do quality control all your life, do you?” Whitegon asked. A better strategy, she suggested, would be for Nicolov to take advantage of federally financed training to learn clerical skills while she was still entitled to unemployment insurance benefits.

Nicolov was directed to another office and another interview, this time with a counselor who specialized in vocational training.

The counselor, Manny Atuatasi, told her that Jobs Plus would finance a 12-week clerical course at a cost of about $3,000. At the end of the course, she would be helped with job placement.

Nicolov, who is skilled at operating Bulgarian keyboards, was told that she not only would learn American typing style but also word processing on a computer terminal.

Nicolov was sent to register at Service Employment and Redevelopment Operation, a nonprofit job placement and training organization in Santa Ana. Her classes would be conveniently near her son’s college. If she had trouble getting to classes, she was told, she would be eligible for free bus passes.

On the elevator from the Jobs Plus office to the county parking lot, Nicolov began to shake at the thought of returning to school as a middle-aged woman in a foreign country. “I am nervous because I don’t know if I can do it,” she said.

When Nicolov entered the front office of Service Employment, she grew even more nervous. She spotted a flyer that described clerical classes and jobs for graduates, ranging in pay from $4.50 to $6 an hour.

She was stunned, realizing that was much less than her wages at Xidex and no better than she would get by staying in factory work.

Leonor Duran, the Service Employment operations director, explained to Nicolov that she could earn substantially more money if she learned computer programming. But that would take an extra 8 weeks of instruction after about 13 weeks of basic clerical training.

James Sanchez, Service Employment executive director, said a clerical worker trained on a word processor initially can be employed at $8 an hour or more.

“The more computer applications you know, the more marketable you are,” he said. “Each new application you earn means more dollars in your pocketbook.”

He said he recently placed a graduate with excellent grammar, typing skills and very sharp computer skills in a job paying $21 an hour.

But there was another hitch. Nicolov had tested in English at only a sixth-grade reading level. She would have to read at a ninth-grade level before she would qualify to study computer programming. Bringing her English up to snuff, she was told, probably would take yet another month of schooling and would have to be her first priority.

It became clear that if Nicolov wanted a clerical career that would pay her bills, she would need to attend classes from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday for about 6 months--not 12 weeks as she was originally advised by the Jobs Plus counselor.

The realization hit hard. “I have to be sure I can make my living in these 6 months,” she told Duran.

She would think it over during the long Thanksgiving weekend, she said. In parting, Duran advised her that if she could swing it, the clerical training would pay off.

That weekend Nicolov did a lot of thinking. She was concerned that even if she successfully completed the course, the school might get her a job for only $4 or $6 an hour. “And I don’t know at my age if I will be any good at school,” she said.

Within a few days, she had dropped the idea of learning word processing. Instead, she decided to try to launch a baby-sitting business. She got a license and distributed flyers advertising her child-care service in laundry rooms and on doors in the apartment complex where she lives.

But 6 weeks later she was still trying to get her first customer. She said a number of parents had called to inquire about her service and promised to get back to her “just like the companies” she has applied to that also somehow never call back.

As 1989 rolled in, she was determined to again begin looking for a job in earnest, which for her means hitting three, four or more companies a day. She was even applying for a job in Los Angeles, although that would require a long commute or a move.

“I think it is time to find something,” she said.