Recession Fading for O.C. Jobless : Economy: Many of the Newly Hired Are Making Less : Shipping Worker: ‘If I have luck, maybe I can find a job in graphic design.’
With help from Catholic Charities, Binh Nguyen took a job last week packing containers of medicine into boxes at Merical Distributors in Anaheim, thus returning to the work force for the first time since he was laid off from McDonnell Douglas Aircraft in July, 1992.
Nguyen, 46, says he’s glad to be working again, especially since he recently exhausted his state unemployment benefits. “This is survival,” he says.
But Nguyen is hardly celebrating. Like other displaced union workers in manufacturing, he has had to accept much less than the $15 an hour he received as an electrician for McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach.
In his new job, Nguyen earns $5 an hour and works a grueling 10-hour, four-day shift that brings him back to his Fountain Valley home well past 3 a.m. “I stand on my feet all night,” he said, but with no resentment in his voice.
The last two years have been an ordeal, Nguyen says, but he has not lost hope.
Through union-sponsored and federal retraining programs, Nguyen recently finished a seven-month course learning skills in graphic design and desktop publishing at Platt Collge in Newport Beach. He hopes soon to turn those skills into a new career.
“I learned fine art in Vietnam,” Nguyen says. “I have creative skills,” he adds, showing a black portfolio of restaurant menus, business pamphlets and other designs and sketches.
Nguyen, his wife and their 19-year-old son came to California in 1985 from Ho Chi Minh City. In 1990, he was hired by McDonnell Douglas, where he was trained to be an aircraft electrician. But with low seniority, Nguyen was one of the first to be laid off when the aircraft maker cut back two years ago.
For a full year after the layoff, Nguyen searched for a high-paying job but could find nothing, he says. “First I looked for a job in the same position, but there were no more jobs in aerospace. I made a lot of calls, I went in person, I sent out resumes. I couldn’t find anything.”
Nguyen said he thinks companies are now hiring more workers. And he has new skills to offer. “If I have luck,” he says, “maybe I can find a job in graphic design.”
