‘Looking for work is a full time job’

By Lauren FitzPatrick
(708) 802-8832
lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com

In the rear of the Orland Park Public Library, lifelong machinist David Blaha reports to work each morning.

The silence is a world away from the din of the machine shop that laid him off nearly two years ago. The tools of his new trade are a laptop computer and the library’s reference books that offer advice on resume writing and prepping for job interviews.

He tinkers with applications now. He fixes appointments, all hoping to land another job as a maintenance machinist.

Blaha, 53, of Orland Hills, now lives by this routine.

“Looking for a job is a full-time job,” he whispered, mindful of patrons reading nearby. “That’s why I get out of the house and come here.”

Thing is though, the hiring process is nothing like it used to be, he said. You can’t just show up anymore to see a guy and walk out, a few questions later, with a start date. Most companies won’t even accept dropped-off resumes.

Hiring is a multilayered process, with numerous tests and conversations, that starts with an online application. Blaha has taken welding tests, drug tests, medical tests – even something
called a listening and observation test.

He’s had to show a birth certificate, a passport – even his diploma from Reavis High School proving his graduation.

“You’d think I’m going to be president of the United States,” he said.

‘You can’t give in or give up’

Blaha adores machines. They’re in his blood. His Slavic surname translates roughly to “man of bronze.” His father, a master machinist, lost his hearing working all his life in a machine shop. He can look at a part and visualize the mold that made it. And making machines work again thrills him.

“I have a natural knack with machines,” he said. “Repairing something is like bringing it to life.”

But in March 2008, the mailing machine company in Crestwood Blaha was working for told him his drilling and milling skills were no longer needed. With the economy buckling, companies were spending less on mailings and on the machines that stuff them.

Between March 2008 and December 2009, Illinois has lost 90,300 manufacturing jobs, while the nation lost a total of 1,869,000 jobs in that sector, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

Blaha, meanwhile, has gone through the seven stages of grief that job counselors warned him about.

And he’s torn through a good seven incarnations of resumes with help from area job clubs.

The clubs – Blaha is up to three, sponsored by St. Elizabeth Seton in Orland Hills, St. Germaine in Oak Lawn and Our Lady of the Woods in Orland Park – help keep his morale up. He’s gotten help tweaking his resume and polishing his interviewing skills.

An active church and choir member at Our Lady of the Ridge in Chicago Ridge, Blaha draws on his Catholic faith to keep it together.

“I think prayer helps me the most,” he said. “You have to believe it’s going to get better. You can’t give in or give up.”

‘Economy has gotten better’

After decades of early morning starts on the job, Blaha[0] still wakes up at 6 a.m. The library doesn’t open until 9, so he drinks coffee, reads the news, gets dressed.

Though some of his job club colleagues still don a shirt and tie every day, Blaha prefers T-shirts.
Setting up by the library’s broad windows, he checks an e-mail inbox that’s full of tips about potential jobs. He jumps on the new ones for any maintenance machinist jobs within 30 miles of home.

“You’ve got to get on the job right away and apply within three days or they won’t even call you,” he said.

Some of the ads prove useless, Blaha’s learned over months of doing this. Companies with dozens of listings all over the area are actually training schools trying to get you to click through, he said.

“I tend to stay away from staffing services. They’re more of a pain, more of a runaround.”

At least he has listings again to try for. In October, Blaha received only a few job matches a day. Now he’ll hit on 25 or 30.

“The economy has gotten better just watching the job things that come up,” he said.

By 2 p.m. each day, he heads home to check messages on his answering machine and set up his plan of attack for the next day. He makes dinner for the younger brother he’s shared an apartment with since both men divorced 18 years ago.

After 22 months of job searching, Blaha thinks he’s mastered the dance.

One company just turned him down, but he’s deep in the process at a second – a real company, not an agency.

But he won’t quit the hunt until he has a final offer to accept and a start date, saying, “Until you have a job, you don’t have one.”

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Published in the SouthtownStar, Feb. 18, 2010.

PDF Seeking work is a full time job || The SouthtownStar
Seeking work is a full time job- 2 || The SouthtownStar

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Published in the SouthtownStar, Feb. 18, 2010.

PDF Seeking work is a full time job || The SouthtownStar

Online Looking for work is a full-time job || The SouthtownStar

As seen in the Chicago Sun-Times Feb. 21, 2010. The job scramble- ‘A cruel game of musical chairs’ || CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

As seen in the Belleville News Democrat, Feb. 22, 2010. Looking for work is a full-time job

‘Church gives unemployed the hope they need’

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK

For those struggling or suffering because of unemployment, a crowd gathered at St. Elizabeth Seton Church in Orland Hills on Tuesday night to pray that they find the support they need.

That political leaders might make better decisions for others, they prayed. That everyone caring for others might be blessed with patience and strength.

And for the HOPE ministry – the Helping Our Parishioners With Employment program – that God will continue strengthen and bless all the participants, they prayed.

It’s an easy pitfall, the Rev. Rich Homa told the 80 or so scattered throughout church pews, for unemployed people to feel abandoned and frustrated.

“I pray and pray, and pray and pray, and God never seems to answer my prayers,” is what Homa said he hears.

“The promise of God isn’t to make the twists and turns and dips and bends all straight and smooth,” he said. “The promise of God is to be with us in the first car as we roll into the twists and turns and the dips and the bends.”

HOPE isn’t typically this religious. The monthly job club, though hosted at the church, is open to people of all faiths, or even no faith. But each year the group celebrates a Mass to pray and sing comforting hymns. This year’s crowd, said Steve Sitzberger, an organizer of HOPE, was a tad smaller than last year, though the unemployment rate in Illinois is still higher than the national 10 percent average, measuring 10.9 percent in November 2009.

That’s potentially an indication that fewer folks need jobs, he said of the smaller turnout.

Lee Junkans, a parishioner and head of career services at Chicago State University, offers a free resume service for HOPE members. He reviews resumes one-on-one during the meetings to review changes, and he edits with a heavy hand.

“I do job searches for a living,” he said. “If I’m to do a service, I’m going to rip it apart because there’s no being polite here. If they get my free stuff, I’m going to give them everything I can.”

Carol McDermott has been out of work as a paralegal for six months.

She was pleased with her first HOPE meeting, though she had been nervous about telling her story to so many strangers.

“You don’t want to admit that things are that bad,” said McDermott, of Chicago’s Beverly community. “I know I needed help on one level.

“I’m absolutely amazed,” she continued. “This was very uplifting, I’m sure you can feel it.”

ABOUT THE MINISTRY

HOPE employment ministry is open to people of all faiths. Meetings are held the first Tuesday of every month, at 7 p.m., at St. Elizabeth Seton Church, 9300 W. 167th St., Orland Hills. Job finding services, such as resume reviews, all are free.

For more information visit http://www.steseton.com or contact Steve Sitzberger at (708) 712-2837.

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Published in the SouthtownStar, Jan. 14, 2010

PDF Dear God, let there be work || SouthtownStar
With a hope and a prayer || SouthtownStar

Printable Church gives unemployed the hope they need || The SouthtownStar

LINK to photo gallery

Since 1982

Jobless claims largest in 26 years

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 7:38 AM CST, December 11, 2008

WASHINGTON – The government says new claims for unemployment benefits reached their highest level in 26 years last week, as companies cut workers at a rapid pace.

The Labor Department said Thursday that initial applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 573,000, from an upwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That was far more than the 525,000 claims Wall Street economists expected.

A Labor Department analyst says the jump is partly due to a rebound in claims from the Thanksgiving holiday week when government offices were open for fewer days.

Still, the four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, was a seasonally-adjusted 540,500, the highest since December 1982, when the economy was emerging from a steep recession.

The kinds of records that shouldn’t be broken

Jobless claims jump unexpectedly to 16-year high
November 20, 2008
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — New claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday, providing more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market expected to get even worse next year.

The government said new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 from a downwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That’s much higher than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 505,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

That is also the highest level of claims since July 1992, the department said, when the U.S. economy was coming out of a recession.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, was even worse: it rose to 506,500, the highest in more than 25 years.

In addition, the number of people continuing to claim unemployment insurance rose sharply for the third straight week to more than 4 million, the highest since December 1982, when the economy was in a painful recession.

Dodging the Pink Slip Club in the Star-Ledger Mailroom

Buyout-Depleted ‘Star-Ledger’ Reassigns Two Journos — To Mailroom 
By Joe Strupp 
Published: November 19, 2008 10:55 AM ET 

NEW YORK When a newspaper cuts its staff, those who remain in the depleted newsroom become valuable. But as The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. slowly says farewell to 151 newsroom folks who took buyouts last month, at least two longtime journalists have been reassigned to the mailroom.

Reporter Jason Jett and Assistant Deputy Photo Editor Mitchell Seidel have been filing, sorting, and delivering mail for more than a week, according to sources.

Jett and Seidel, who could not be reached for comment, apparently declined to take one of the buyouts offered this fall as part of a companywide move to cut costs.

Read more here. On the one hand, the mailroom’s a job. With benefits. On the other hand, the mailroom’s the entry point to a company, when, in days long gone, one could get a foot in the door and then move up.

Pink Slip Club: Even a Pulitzer can’t guarantee a reporting job

From The Reader’s Michael Miner in a post here:

On Wednesday the Tribune‘s editor, Gerould Kern, and associate managing editor for national news Joycelyn Winnecke dropped in on the Washington bureau and laid (John) Crewdson off. They also laid off national correspondents Bay Fang and Stephen Hedges, national security correspondent Aamer Madhani, and, I’m told, a fifth Washington staffer who worked part-time.

At the same time, I hear, eight Washington staffers from the Los Angeles Times lost their jobs too.

As Chicago’s own Barack Obama prepares to move into the White House, Tribune journalistic talent is in increasingly short supply in Washington. Bureau chief Michael Tackett resigned last summer, and acting chief Naftali Bendavid quit the other day and is heading to the Wall Street Journal. Last week the Tribune Company appointedCissy Baker vice president of a consolidated Washington bureau serving the Tribune,the LA Times, and the rest of the company’s newspaper, broadcasting, and new media operations. Since 2003 she’d been a vice president of Tribune Broadcasting.

Crewdson won a Pulitzer in 1981 for his reporting while at The New York Times on illegal immigration. Hurry up and read his DC stuff for the Tribune here before they take it down.

Job losses looming

Mayor Daley said Wednesday he’s been warned by a parade of corporate CEOs that a blizzard of job cuts are about to bury the souring Chicago economy.

“Huge layoffs are coming in November and December. And next year, there’s going to be [even more] huge layoffs. All the corporation CEOs have come in to tell me. That’s just the beginning. It’s not their end result,” Daley told reporters after a City Council meeting.

Read the rest here in the Sun Times.

Ugh.

Pink Slip Club: Chicago attorneys

Two Chicago law firms lay off attorneys, staff

By Ameet Sachdev Tribune staff reporter
1:37 PM CDT, October 16, 2008

Two Chicago law firms have fired attorneys this week, moves to cut cost during precarious economic times.

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal let go about 24 lawyers across its practices and offices, according to an e-mail Chairman Elliott Portnoy sent out late Wednesday.

Katten Muchin Rosenman laid off 21 lawyers, partner Tasneem Goodman said in a statement.

The cuts come as their corporate clients hunker down amid the nation’s worst financial crisis in decades.

More here.

Pink Slip Club: GM

GM to lay off 1,600 workers at 3 factories
By TOM KRISHER, AP Auto Writer
DETROIT – Another 1,600 workers at three General Motors Corp. factories will be laid off indefinitely over the next few months as the company tries to control its inventory amid a worsening U.S. sales slump.

About 700 workers at GM’s pickup truck plant in Pontiac will be furloughed starting Feb. 1, while another 500 at the Detroit-Hamtramck sedan factory will be laid off starting Jan. 12, spokesman Chris Lee said Thursday. In addition, 400 workers at a two-seat sports car assembly plant in Wilmington, Del., also will be out of work starting Dec. 8.

The rest is here.

I talked to a certain local Ford union leader last week, and by talked, I mean listened to his stories while a foreign colleague fired away. His insights on how the car industry’s successes like the Ford Taurus were also its downfall as execs rested on their laurels instead of continuing to innovate. 

Pink Slip Club California

And in California:

State workers get work hours cut in half, others laid off in state budget mess

Story Updated: Aug 2, 2008

By Jose Gaspar

Denis Monsibais is an Examiner at the Bakersfield Department of Motor Vehicle office where she has worked for 19 years. Friday she and 8 other co-workers were sent home early after having worked half a day.

“I never thought it would come to this. We always got threats and this one really did come through,” said the mother of two.

Numerous state workers throughout Kern County have either been laid off or had their work hours reduced as a result of an Executive Order by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Statewide more than 10,000 part-time and seasonal workers lost their jobs. An additional 200,000 could have their pay cut to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour with full salary reimbursed once a budget is signed.

Schwarzenegger said the move was necessary because legislators have failed to approve a state budget and the state needs to build up sufficient cash reserves to avoid a cash crisis in September.

But state workers question why they should be the ones to bear the brunt of the budget crisis.

Here’s the rest.