Seven Recession Victims Learning to Make Sacrifices to Survive

It happened in Detroit. It happened in Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley. And now it’s happening in Southern California.

After auto assembly lines shut down and steel furnaces went cold, laid-off workers stretched out unemployment benefits and nurtured hope for a return to the plant--until they could hold out no longer. Then they found jobs elsewhere, often at much lower pay.

Now Southland workers--from the defense industry and real estate, from Hollywood and high-rise financial offices--are joining hundreds of thousands of Rust Belt workers before them in reconciling themselves to the changes in careers and lives wrought by the caprices of economic disruption.

One of them, Michael Mack, walks five hours a day, six days a week delivering mail for the Rancho Park post office.

For that, he earns a third of what he used to as an aerospace machinist. He gets no benefits--not even an allowance for uniforms or the shoe soles he’s wearing through. It’ll be another six weeks of probation before he can even gain “casual” carrier status, when he would double his pay to $12. In another year or two, he might get hired on permanently.

But the 38-year-old Mack is taking his chances--looking forward instead of trying to squeeze one more job from the aerospace industry.

“I’ve never known anyone to get laid off from the post office,” Mack said. “That right there is a big contrast to aerospace. And that right there will make it all worthwhile.”

Mack was laid off from McDonnell Douglas in the summer of 1992. He got a job at Rockwell, but was laid off there too. Almost a year went by, taking him on a seemingly interminable round of job fairs and unemployment offices, until he was called back to Rockwell--for six weeks.

By October, he had exhausted his unemployment compensation. So he headed for the post office. He finds his “giant paper route” of a job physically taxing but far less stressful than aerospace work.

In some ways, that has helped Mack accept a career change and drastic pay drop at an age when most people are counting on being secure and comfortable.

Mack’s savings have been nearly exhausted by mortgage payments on his South-Central home, which are bigger than his monthly pay, and he has imposed a $20 limit on most expenditures.

“That’s why I’ve been eating at my mom’s house,” he said. “She’ll never let you go hungry, especially when you have a job to go to.”

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Her life in Beverly Hills may seem a world apart from Mack’s, but Linda Ford also knows about making sacrifices and adjusting to diminished circumstances.

She has learned to live on a fraction of the six-figure salary she was earning just a few years ago. Stripped of her staff of about half a dozen, Ford now runs her public relations agency out of a small, no-frills office about one-tenth the size of the company’s former digs.

But, like Mack, Ford has let go of some of the stress of her former work life.

“In an odd sort of way, I’m kind of glad that the recession came, because it forced me to adjust my lifestyle and take another look at my priorities,” Ford said.

She hopes a book she wrote during the lean days at her agency, now in the hands of a small distributor, will be picked up by a large publishing house and yield fat royalties. In the meantime, Ford is rebuilding her business with clients who share her newfound interest in “exploring the human potential.”

She doesn’t expect an economic boom soon, but Ford said she’s not too worried: “I’ve finally learned what people mean when they say, ‘Less is more.’ ”

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Robert Loya, whose career has been in flux for nearly two years, has no illusions about job security.

The project on which Loya has been working since May could be finished as early as March. After that, his job at Mitchell, Jobe & Co. in Huntington Beach will probably depend on future contracts from the Resolution Trust Corp., the federal agency cleaning up the savings and loan mess.

“If new work doesn’t come in, then I guess I’m out beating the bushes again,” the 49-year-old accountant said.

He knows the territory: He has been jobless half a dozen times before.

There had always been another job waiting or easily won--until April, 1992, when he was laid off from his job as controller of a small thrift. It took nine months to find another job, and that one lasted only six months. Now there’s the temporary RTC gig.

Though Loya has been moonlighting in real estate, he still isn’t back up to the $60,000-a-year pace he was at in 1992. For a time, his wife, Emily, pulled a lot of overtime hours on her nursing job. The Mission Viejo family adjusted its budget and put off major purchases, except emergency ones, such as when the washing machine broke down.

Emily Loya is once again putting in overtime, this time to buy Christmas gifts for their four children.

Perhaps it’s the season that has brought Loya a bit of hope. The next time he hits the pavement, he thinks, it might not be so bleak. “At least the job market has got a pulse now,” he said. “It’s coming back from the dead.”

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Since hard times struck Barry Bernson, he has proven himself an indefatigable pragmatist.

In 1992, he worked only 10 weeks at his craft, making movie and television props and special effects. He cashed out his IRA, shrugging at the huge bills for taxes and penalties.

He calls 1993 a very good year, despite having been laid off several times, most recently on the day before Thanksgiving.

He defines “good” this way: He worked 28.8 weeks, meaning he once again qualifies for union benefits; he paid off $5,000 of his debts, and he managed to keep the new van he bought in the spring, when he thought things were really looking up.

Bernson is still trying to forge new opportunities for himself by writing and studying directing.

And even though from the periphery 1994 doesn’t look too bright--the Hollywood crafts unions could go on strike at the beginning of the year, or face unilaterally imposed 50% pay cuts--the 42-year-old Woodland Hills bachelor refuses to indulge in whining.

“I always set one (New Year’s) resolution: to work one more day than last year,” he said. “One more day than 1993 is 29 weeks. If I work even more than that, that’s fine too.”

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It has been seven months since Jeff Weekes landed a job at Cleveland Golf Co., and finally the feeling of job security is beginning to set in.

The signs: a new blue minivan sits in the driveway of the Weekeses’ Corona house; Anne Weekes has cut back on work hours at her nursing job; daughter Brianne, 6, has resumed gymnastics lessons, and both Brianne and Tara, 3, play on a new swing set in the back yard.

Weekes is working harder and longer hours than when he was an aerospace engineer at Rockwell. After he was laid off in late 1992, it was five months before he caught on at Cleveland.

In his new job, Weekes has more responsibility and a greater feeling of satisfaction.

“I’m working at something that I like more,” Weekes said. “It never bothered me at Rockwell, but it’s a little nicer to be able to think that what you’re making is used for fun rather than war.”

His hard work has also been paying off. Changes he suggested have significantly reduced the time it takes to build a golf club.

“Back at Rockwell, there were just so many levels of management, a lot of things were more or less dictated to us,” Weekes said. “Here we run the show. There’s less management, so more time to do the things that really matter.”

Besides, like former aerospace machinist Michael Mack, Weekes feels lucky to have left behind the vagaries of defense work--especially when he hears from friends still caught in the aerospace cycle of rehiring and layoffs.

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Long Beach realtors Walt and Dolorie Thurner expected 1993 to be a dismal year. But as mortgage rates fell and the real estate market picked up a bit, the couple found their careers reviving. By June, they had sold more homes than they did in all of 1992.

Living through three rocky years in real estate has left fewer marks on the Thurners’ lives than on those of many other recession-affected Southlanders. Both have worked harder and longer hours, and Dolorie still hasn’t given up a part-time job on the side. But the experience has brought the couple closer together, Walt said.

He expects things to get even better in 1994, and while he said it “won’t be a walk in the park by any means,” he expects that “we’ll finally have more ups than downs.”

“After all that we’ve been through over the past few years,” he said, “there’s just no way (things) could get worse.”