Thousands of Laid-Off Workers Facing Dismal Job Prospects in Recession
This past summer, 34-year-old Rosalba Becerra left El Pollo Loco for a cashier’s job in a California Pizza Kitchen outlet inside Los Angeles International Airport. The job paid $7.22 an hour not a fortune, but it offered Becerra, a single mom with three daughters in Inglewood, a chance to become a bartender and earn tips at one of the airport bars run by her employer, HMS Host Corp.
Of course, Becerra’s timing couldn’t have been worse. She was laid off on Sept. 27, and with little seniority, her prospects for being called back to the sparsely trafficked terminal are dim. “I tried to find another job at Radisson (near the airport),” she said. “They said business is too slow. They aren’t taking applications now; they are actually closing restaurants. They’re getting only two or three customers a day.”
For most Angelenos, the budding recession hasn’t yet hit home, even after the events of Sept. 11. Retirement-account balances have dwindled, new-car purchases have been postponed, but in most cases the paychecks are still flowing.
For laid-off workers, though, concentrated in low-wage jobs at the airport and in the hotel industry, the drop-off in air travel has been devastating. The attacks, coming at a time when the economy already was slowing down, have thrown hundreds into a job market that’s been tightening all year.
“A year ago it would have been no problem for people to move on to something else, especially here where the economy’s booming,” said Ruth Milkman, director of the UC Institute for Labor and Employment at UCLA. The timing of the attacks has made it harder to replace the jobs being lost, she said.
“I’m scared right now,” Becerra said after a week spent searching fruitlessly for a job. “If they aren’t going to resolve the problems (with airport traffic), what are we going to do? It’s not only me, it’s a lot of people.”
Dreams shattered
Like investors who grew comfortable with ever-rising stock prices over the past decade, lower-wage workers have been charting their own modest climb up the economic ladder: switching to better-paying jobs, starting families, buying cars, and sometimes even homes. With a couple of rungs suddenly knocked out, many are now struggling to hang on.
“I’ve worked with many different companies, and every time I’ve changed it’s been because I’ve gotten a better wage, and also better benefits,” said Mario Gomez, 31.
When Gomez arrived in Los Angeles from his native El Salvador in 1991, his first job was passing out flyers at people’s doorsteps. Since then, he’s held a number of jobs, first in roofing, then as a janitor. Five years ago, he landed a job with an airport contractor, as a janitor in the Delta Airlines terminal.
When he was laid off on Sept. 23 by RisComp Industries Inc., Gomez was making $9.72 an hour, plus health coverage, sick leave and vacation pay. In his next job, “I’m fearful I’m going to be paid less,” Gomez said.
Unions have tried to help, but they’re in triage mode.
“People can live anywhere between three to four months, if not longer, with less income,” said Armando Olivas, AFL-CIO Community Services director. He teaches union organizers techniques to help their members survive financially when the paycheck stops coming in.
There is a possibility that Gomez’s local, Service Employees International Union local 1877, can place him at a lower-paying job with Universal Studios while he waits out developments at the airport. But with attendance down at theme parks, and 20 laid-off janitors to place, it’s a tall order.
“It’s just a disaster,” said Noel Rodriguez, an organizer with Local 814 of Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International, which represents 2,500 workers at LAX. “Nationwide we have between 20 to 50 percent layoffs.” Several hundred of those are at LAX.
Single mother
One of those is Becerra, who emigrated from Mexico in 1984 and became a citizen last year. She’s been raising her three daughters ages nine, six and four on her own since breaking up with her husband a year ago. Now she must try again to persuade him to pay child support. Otherwise she may have to go on welfare for the first time. “I don’t really like it, but there’s no choice,” she said. “I feel like that’s for lazy people but this is kind of an emergency.”
In South L.A., homeowner Juan Monsalvo wonders what to do with his bills. “We’ve got a mortgage, we’ve got car payments, we’ve got insurance payments who’s going to cover that?” he asked. Monsalvo, a recently laid-off skycap, and his father split the mortgage on a South L.A. duplex. “If I can’t pay it, he’s going to have to back me up, and if he doesn’t have it we’re stuck,” he said.
Monsalvo, who also lost a part-time job at the airport, admits to feeling overwhelmed and a bit depressed. He still hopes to be rehired by Globe Aviation Services Corp., where he has two years’ seniority. He has turned down a job as a security screener, which doesn’t come with tips. “It’s not my personality to be a guard,” he said. “That’s not what I want to do.”
His wife is looking for work, and soon Monsalvo will have to decide whether to move on. “Is this thing going to come back? It’s not going to be the same,” he said.
Other jobs hit
The pain isn’t limited to the airports.
“If I can get through the next couple months I will be OK, but if it goes longer, past December, then I won’t,” said Clemente Calloway, a concierge at the Hyatt Regency hotel downtown. Calloway, a member of HERE local 11, said the union would continue his medical and dental benefits, but the single father worries about paying for his 17-year-old son’s prom next spring.
Last week, Calloway was told he could expect only sporadic shifts through the holidays. Though he knew business was down, the extent of the stoppage came as a shock. “I was expecting to work, but not so regularly. I wasn’t expecting a complete halt to my work schedule.”
Last Tuesday, Calloway was waiting for his son to come home from school, so he could break the news of the layoff. “He’s not a spoiled kid, he works with me,” Calloway said.
Gomez, meanwhile, won’t be able to pay monthly $200 in child support for his six-year-old daughter, Rosemary. “I like to take my daughter out to eat at McDonald’s sometimes, I like to buy her clothes. I’m not able to do that.”
He’ll also have to halt the $100 a month that helps his elderly father pay for food and other necessities in Usulatan province in El Salvador. “He depends on me. Now I won’t be able to help him,” Gomez said.
