class warfare USA redux

[Ian Murray <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Forced Down or Out in Grand Rapids
In Manufacturing-Heavy Region, Economy Is Disrupting Thousands of Careers

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 28, 2003; Page E01


GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- For many people these days, keeping a job has been
a lesson in downward mobility.

Bill Van Luyn had worked for Steelcase Inc., the world's largest business
furniture maker, for 26 years, scrambling up the company ladder from
summer substitute laborer to machine operator, to shop floor supervisor
and finally to the white-collar stability of new-product development.

When the business furniture industry began its devastating slide 21/2
years ago, Van Luyn held his breath as five rounds of layoffs passed him
by. Then, this past October, he was offered a choice: Leave now, with six
months' severance pay, or go back to the assembly line making file
cabinets on the dusk-to-dawn shift for a salary 30 percent below his
white-collar pay.

Lean and fit at 6-foot-4 and 180 pounds, a swimmer by hobby and risk
averse by nature, Van Luyn figured he could handle the work. But at 51, he
proved himself wrong. Tendinitis in both elbows quickly set in. Then
tendons locked in his thumbs, a hazard of the trade known as trigger
finger. Now, Van Luyn is on workers' compensation, waiting to heal from
his recent right-hand surgery and preparing for July 11, when his left
thumb goes under the knife.

Van Luyn's occupational fall may seem extreme, but workers here and across
the country are making similar compromises to avoid joining the
unemployed. The stubborn 7.3 percent unemployment rate around Grand Rapids
is itself a shock for an area accustomed to the success that residents
figure comes naturally from hard work and a conservative lifestyle. But
unemployment rates understate the tumult and tragedies of a labor market
that has forced workers to give up hours and overtime, lose pensions and
health benefits, and trade down stable, well-paid jobs for uncertain,
increasingly lower-paid ones.

It is difficult to track such turmoil in statistics, but labor economists
point to one number watched by the federal government to illustrate what
they call "underemployment." Between the trough of July 2000 and this May,
the last month for which statistics are available, the number of workers
who say they have unwillingly taken part-time jobs because of slack work
conditions or because no full-time work was available has risen nearly 47
percent, to 4.6 million from 3.1 million.

Among them are people like Amber Hester, 48, who lost a job with a
furniture maker in 2001, was hired in 2002 to make tracks for car seats,
and was laid off again in February. Now she boxes Amway orders on the
swing shift for a temporary agency paying her little more than half her
original salary with no benefits.

"You kind of get used to it," Hester said Tuesday evening as she prepared
to go to work. "You do what you have to do these days. What else can you
do?"

Then there's Van Luyn's brother Dick, who has seen his 55- to 60-hour
workweek and $60,000-a-year salary at Steelcase shaved to 32 hours and
$38,000. But the house and boat on a lake still take money, so Dick Van
Luyn leaves Steelcase in the evening for a cleaning-service job on the
night shift.

Even many full-time workers consider themselves employed beneath their
worth or dignity.

At 57, Nancy Miller lost her $15.13-an-hour engine parts job at W.A.
Thomas Hy-Lift last year when the plant was shuttered without warning. But
Miller quickly took a far tougher, manual labor position at Supreme
Machined Products Co. in nearby Spring Lake for $9 an hour, with no
pension benefits. Money was not all she had to sacrifice. She recently
lost the tip of an index finger under the crush of a metal press.

"We've gotten knocked down so many times," sighed Miller over coffee at
Carmen's, a diner in Muskegon's down-on-its-heels downtown. "Most of us
can bounce back up, but it's a tough world out there."

By the standards of past recessions, even by the standards of the nation's
hardest-pressed areas today, the labor market in the Grand
Rapids-Muskegon-Holland triangle does not appear that bad.

But joblessness here is higher than the national 6.1 percent rate. Since
the beginning of 2001, the area's once thriving office furniture business
has shed nearly 5,000 jobs -- 44 percent of the industry's local work
force -- while the region's small tool-and-die makers have continued their
long slide toward oblivion. Jobs in durable-goods manufacturing in the
region have plunged nearly 29 percent in the same period, to 95,500 in
March, from 135,100.

"As far as Grand Rapids is concerned, an unemployment rate of 6 or 7
percent is just terrible," said Joseph Ross, a workforce analyst for
temporary-employment giant Manpower who focuses on West Michigan. "For the
people of Grand Rapids, they just have never experienced anything like
this."

Here, as across the nation, the job malaise is affecting white-collar
workers and blue-collar union members and management. The economic
downturn was led by a sharp decline in business investment following the
boom of the 1990s, exacerbated by the implosion of the dot-com and telecom
sectors and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. If tight-fisted firms are
reluctant to purchase high-end office furniture, they certainly will not
pay full freight for Aeron chairs made by Grand Rapids-based Herman Miller
Inc. when dot-com creditors are dumping them at fire-sale prices, Ross
noted.

Productivity gains during the downturn have enabled companies like
Steelcase to do more with fewer workers, said Steelcase Chief Financial
Officer Jim Keane. The unemployment rate has been held down in part by an
influx of older women into the service workforce, said Jenny Shangraw,
information resource manager at Grand Rapids' economic development agency.
That has made it that much more difficult for young people trying to break
into the job market.

Kevin MacDonald, 23, proudly claimed his degree in aviation science and
administration from Western Michigan University in December, but the
closest he's come to a job in his chosen field is behind the counter at
Enterprise Car Rental in Grand Rapids' Gerald R. Ford International
Airport.

"I call it my adapt-and-overcome policy," he shrugged. "You just have to
go with it."

And economic recovery has been hampered by businesses' reluctance to hire.
Despite what he called "a gradual but noticeable increase in demand,"
Keane refused to say when Grand Rapids' largest employer would start
adding workers again.

"We're going to be cautious about how we run our business," he said.

In all of those factors, Grand Rapids is tracking the nation as a whole,
say labor economists.

The recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s disproportionately
struck workers without high school and college degrees, said Lawrence
Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. During the recession
of 1980-1983, employment fell by 5.6 percent for high school dropouts and
3.9 percent for those who never attended college, compared with 2.4
percent for workers with some college education. In contrast, since
mid-2000, unemployment has risen by 2.3 percent for high school dropouts,
1.8 percent for high school graduates, 2 percent for workers with some
college education -- "an egalitarian recession," Mishel said.

As in Grand Rapids, the nation has seen a steady influx of older women
into the work force, 849,000 in all since May 2002, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. In contrast, the number of workers between
ages 16 and 24 has fallen by 454,000 over the same period.

Ross said the problem of underemployment is bound to be temporary. Many
out-of-work or underemployed white-collar managers will network themselves
back to work or simply leave the area if positions don't open soon, he
said. Steelcase's Keane insisted that the end of the Iraq war has already
led to signs of a turnaround. The increases in orders the firm is now
seeing should lead to ramped-up production in six to eight weeks, he said.

But for many area workers, optimism seems to be at a premium right now.
Furniture makers foresaw an uptick last year as well.

"There's two arenas here, the reality one and the 'I hope' one," Bill Van
Luyn said wearily about his future. "I would hope within 24 months,
Steelcase would see a recovery and I'll be back in the new product
development arena. In reality, I don't see the sunny side of the egg."