Twenty seven years I had been in the automotive design business.
At 3:30 in the afternoon I was asked into the conference room where I was told that I was to be terminated. I was not laid off or fired, but terminated. I received a severance check. It amounted to about 2 months pay. I was told that I could not come back, and my job was terminated due to the economy.
I was an automotive designer, I had worked at this company for over twenty years and I was a 5-year-old female. I had been one of the first females in the business. In 1982 I started out as a print runner, which was the bottom of the food chain. I loved that job and I loved running prints around Ford country. I felt like a little piece of something so big and wonderful. It was something I had wanted to be part of since my first drafting class in high school. Now here I was. I soon was promoted to detailing, where I had an opportunity to draw. This was why I was there. I had an aptitude for this, learned fast and enjoyed every minute.
Opportunity led me to work in house at Ford Motor Company for a time. I enjoyed this very much, but was never accepted there. I was an agency person, often seen as scab labor, despite the abundance of work, great pay being given to the in house employees and the fact that my company had a whole office full of people "doing Ford work". I educated myself at my own cost to improve my abilities. The classes I took were tough, but I enjoyed all of them. I would be late at classes then go home to do home work. Up before the sun, I would head back to work to do ten hour days plus Saturdays. The overtime money was great and I was able to support me and my two kids. Evolution as it is, I became a designer and eventually learned cad design. I missed the drawing.
After 911 the company I worked for was never the same. At one point we had a great working relationship with a foreign car manufacturing company, but the job was pulled a week after 911 and they were never able to renegotiate a contract with the management, as it was, afterward.
It is November 2009. My chosen profession now requires a degree to get hired. Not so in 1982. I took my retirement and made sure I would at least have a roof over my head. I have paid off my mortgage, but I still can’t find work. I am no longer looking for design work. I am over- qualified for anything I send my resume for but keep sending it out. My pay requirements are not as large as before, and I don’t want to work forever, but will require work soon. Food, utilities and taxes will be needed until I die.
How do I feel?
There is a commercial I see on television, a woman is talking about how careful she has to be, despite the fact that her husband is still at his "good job" and nothing has changed in her life. What is that all about?
A fellow employee told me, after I left, that the management of the company explained the current events as "just a cyclical thing that the auto industry goes through". This has been true in the past, but do the people who are still viably employed really know what is going on? Perhaps some do. Not where I used to work.
I have no health insurance, which is just the way it is. That was cancelled when I was terminated and the cost to get COBRA was prohibitive. It would have cost me half of my unemployment. I’m lucky. I’m healthy right now.
I have spent a lot of time watching the healthcare debates and wondering what the out come will be. Will I be able to afford the government health care? What does the government consider affordable? Those people still have an income, a good sized income. What do they consider affordable?
I just live one day at a time. The house is warm, there are groceries in the kitchen and I have scraped together the taxes for this year. Life is good, but
I am not too sure about the future.
Like I said, I am lucky, both me and my children have it good. Tomorrow? Who knows?
