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Edited on Tue Mar-08-11 03:24 PM by 9thkvius
I am very, very lucky to have finally been hired for a full-time job with benefits, after struggling for a long time to find work. But the past 19 months have opened my eyes to much I might never have otherwise seen. And I have to tell you, it makes me really, really angry. Before I used to think that the rich were screwing us all for their benefit and that government is in their pocket. Now? Now I feel like I KNOW that to be true. So indulge me as I tell you a bit about what these past 19 months have been like for me.
When I first got laid off from my defense contractor job in August 2009, I was stunned. Not counting time in the military, I spent the better part of a decade working for one defense contractor or another. The industry was often frustrating for me, and sometimes it got to be a lot to bear. Obviously, a lot of people who work in that industry are quite conservative, and often I could walk down a hallway in my old building and hear conservative talk radio every third office or so. I could not avoid hearing the various right-wing arguments no matter what I did or where I went, unless I went in my office and shut the door, and even that did not always work because sometimes even then they would arrive in my inbox - the tirades about liberals and how they were ruining the country, etc. My status as a little blue dot in a sea of red made me feel pretty isolated at times, although I did have the comfort of knowing there were at least a few people in the building who sat on the same end of the political spectrum as myself. They were overwhelmingly women and/or minorities. But particularly at my last employer, I felt quite isolated because I knew so few people. I had relocated to Massachusetts (returned, in a manner of speaking, since it is where my family was originally from) in the hopes of being closer to my fiancee and my elderly relatives. But I only knew the people in my immediate department, and they were overwhelmingly the typical angry white males who watch Fox News and read the Herald. One of my bosses would sit down to out lunch table every day and inject illegal immigrants into every conversation, no matter the topic. I have no idea why he hated them so much, but I knew that in the small well-to-do wealthy white town he lived in, they would hardly seem to even be present, much less present a problem. It was then I realized that although I was afraid at the prospect of being unemployed, I was also a bit relieved, because I realized that I had been pretty miserable in my line of work.
So after a while of not having anything to do besides look for work, I began to realize that perhaps this was an opportunity. Maybe I should take my layoff as a sign that I should seriously consider leaving the defense industry and going to work in the civilian world. So I started applying for civilian jobs. For six months, I furiously applied and got almost no interviews. I must have sent out something like 200 resumes and applications. Finally, in despair, I thought that maybe I could do something different to enhance my employability and go back to school. Plus I could continue to collect unemployment, as this was considered retraining. So I enrolled in a local tech school that would help me get some IT certifications. Despite some initial reservations, I soon discovered that it presented new opportunities for me on several levels, and as a result I am glad I did it. It was an excellent experience all around. A lot of the people in my classes were struggling also, as many of them were also collecting unemployment under the Section 30 rules as I was. Almost no one (besides myself) had a college degree. Many had also been laid off and were struggling to find work. I eventually gained several important IT certifications, such as A+ and Network+, and these helped me to land my current job as an IT Security Analyst at a prominent local university.
But it was a hell of a journey. First, we discovered that it was going to be a battle getting me health insurance. At the time my fiancee worked for a "progressive" non-profit that we fully expected to help us out. Its founder was a well-known progressive and pseudo-celebrity in the Cambridge area and quite well-known in the IT world. So when we signed up for a family plan, based on the fact that we were registered domestic partners here in Cambridge, we did not expect our application to be problematic. Instead I learned that the reason the place had become unionized in the first place was because the founder was essentially a petty dictator and micro-manager who made his employees lives miserable. The shop had unionized after the entire staff had quit not once but TWICE because of his poor treatment of them. I had known who he was before she started working there, and sot of looked up to him, but now I came to loathe him as a sexist and a hypocrite. Although he railed against Coca-Cola for having busted unions and killed Union organizers in Columbia some 20 or 30 years ago (and in fact throws a huge tantrum every time their products appear anywhere in the office), he has no problem undermining his own employees at every turn. So he and his lackey, the executive director, refused to allow me onto my fiancee's health plan despite the fact that under the union contract we were clearly allowed to do so. We had to get the union involved and threaten legal action before they finally caved in. But seeds had been planted, and now they saw my fiancee (as well as another female employee who had a tendency to call out the rampant sexism in the office and in the IT community in general) as problems that would need to be solved. The board of directors apparently would not ever challenge the founder, and in fact it had been purged of the only people who had ever stood up to him. So as mismanagement and micro-management ate away at the foundation's budget, they began to look for ways to solve their problems. Eventually they found a solution - fire ALL of the administrative staff. They rationalized this because they would save payroll costs (even though all of these people were on the lowest salary level in the union) and could use volunteers and interns instead. As an unfortunate "coincidence", all of these people being laid off were women. In fact, it consisted of EVERY SINGLE WOMAN who worked at the foundation. The only man at that pay grade? He was kept. The union tried to get concessions and was able to negotiate a few, but the executive director and the founder continued to bypass them as much as they could. And still the founder and his lackeys on the board threaten to fire everyone and start over every time the union tries to negotiate things that seem fairly reasonable, like having a weather policy so that if the entire city shuts down due to a winter storm people can work from home instead of coming in.
We were stunned. People who claimed to be liberal and progressive were doing this to my future wife and to every woman I knew on that staff. And they were doing it without even blinking an eye. No one called them on this. No one in management and no one on the board of directors. Not a soul among those with any real influence in the organization seemed to notice or care that all of the women in the organization were being laid off. And the women were among the most dedicated and hard-working people in the office. Believe me, I spent a good amount of time there and saw how people worked. So our anger rose, and we began to wonder whether or not we might have to sue in order to stop this. Someone leaked the story to a (supposedly) progressive reporter at the Boston Globe, but after talking with the Executive Director on the phone the reporter essentially stopped digging. And of course the ED was now furious because he knew that someone had talked about the impending layoff to a reporter. So he continued to plan for the layoff, but eventually came up with a slight CYA exercise that allowed him to keep one woman on the staff while still eliminating the rest of them, including the two that were giving him and the founder the most "grief" by caring about things like diversity, discrimination and equal opportunity and NOT caring about things that were not in their job description, like fetching the founder's lunch or running his personal errands for him. The union managed to negotiate continued health insurance coverage for those that were being laid off, so we were able to continue having health insurance for a little while longer. But then once that expired we had to pay COBRA. To keep both of us insured was quite expensive, the equivalent of paying two rents a month. So we watched our savings vanish – in the space of a few months it went from well into 5 figures to 3. Money we had intended to use for our honeymoon. Money we kept for vet emergencies. Gone. But we had no choice and no other options.
Last summer, before she was laid off, we had a bit of a scare when the unemployment expired and was not renewed by the Federal government. Of course, our own Scott Brown was one of the people who had voted against it, and I was furious. So since I had all sorts of time on my hands, I went down to the Federal building to see what he was going to do, and to show him the face of at least one person whose life was being affected by his poor choices. I had to get through security, and apparently the security at that building considered two things I was carrying to be weapons - my Leatherman (understandable) and my titanium spork (NOT so understandable). They told me to take my "weapons" over to the nearby Boston Police Department building, where they would gladly keep them for me while I visited the Federal building. So off I went, and naturally the BPD sergeant behind the counter there had no fucking idea what the hell I was talking about and said that they do NOT hold "weapons" for people. When I showed him what they considered to be a weapon, he had a good laugh. So I had to walk to my fiancee's downtown office and leave my stuff there, and then go back. Needless to say, once I finally got there, I was already in a bad mood. So I waited for someone to talk to me. And I waited. I looked around and the various people bustling around the office. All white, of course, at least as far as I could see. Finally some guy in a suit who looked to be in his twenties came out to talk to me. I explained my problem and asked why the senator was not voting for the extension. The guy deflected a bit and then asked me if I had tried some local organizations that were designed to help veterans or if I had tried any religious organizations. I began to get a bit irritated again, because I felt like he was not hearing me and in fact was acting like he could hardly wait for me to get out the door. So I started talking about how I had been looking for work for a long time, and I was doing my best to find employment, and all I needed was unemployment to keep paying my bills and whatnot. I was not sitting at home watching TV. I acknowledged that a lot of Republicans believe unemployed people are just not looking hard enough, and that they also think that they are unemployed due to their own personal failings or whatever. I said “that kind of talk makes me want to throw furniture”, and I could see he was getting more uncomfortable. So I thanked him for his time, although I am sure that my frustration and even disgust was starting to show through a bit.
My next stop was my local Congressman’s office. Wow, was it a completely different experience. I don’t know if the difference was just that between a Senator and a Congressman or what, but it was a remarkable difference in the way I was treated and the way they acted. Mike Capuano’s office was easily accessible and I walked in and talked to the receptionist, an extremely friendly young woman who said someone would be with me shortly. And she wasn’t kidding. Soon I met with one of the Congressman’s aides, and after I talked to him a while and explained what was going on, you know what he did? He took notes. He started making phone calls. Lots of them. He started giving me all sorts of contact information and naming specific groups. He even asked me for a copy of my resume so their office could help me get the internship I needed to complete my tech school program. I was stunned. Wow, a politician who actually acts like he is a servant of the ordinary people like me, people who really need help and not just of the people who already have everything going for them like fucking David Koch.
So having been out of work for all of last year, I am going to have a hell of a tax bill this year. I did not have taxes taken out of my unemployment because I could not afford to lose even more money and still pay my bills. So I am going to end up owing a good bit, probably a few thousand dollars. You know what is totally fucked? The fact that I have to pay income taxes on my unemployment and the fact that so many corporations and rich people in this country find ways to NOT pay income taxes at all. My bank, for example, was one of those who got bailed out, and who was responsible for all sorts of shenanigans. The same bank who consistently gave me shitty customer service when I had to deal with a case of identity theft last year. So they got tens of billions in bailout money, despite the fact that they did some things that were of questionable morality, of not legality. And apparently they paid no income tax for 2009.
So all of this has happened, and now I see more Republicans, millionaires, and billionaires bitch and moan about how teachers like my sister and my aunt make too much money and now have to make more sacrifices by taking cuts in pay and cuts in benefits, while all the while with a straight face they insist that it is wrong to cut the pay of anyone on Wall Street. The very people who are responsible for all of the shenanigans that caused our economy to implode should NOT have to give up their ridiculously high compensation. Hell, they insist that it isn’t their fault – again, it is the fault of those dumb poor people. The ones who couldn’t afford to pay their mortgages. Unions, the only organization who stood up for my future wife and her fellow women in her office, are painted as greedy and selfish. And unemployed people like myself and all of my classmates at the tech school are lazy, shiftless leeches who just need to get off their lazy asses and get a job.
This is where we are as a country? Really? Regulation is the problem? Really? Corporations can regulate themselves? Really? What’s good for GE (who also did not pay any taxes in 2009) is good for the country? Really?
I can totally understand why people in Wisconsin are furious and are fighting back. What I don’t get is why so many other people aren’t fighting back.
I’ve babbled long enough. Good luck to all of those who are still looking. I will do what I can to help. I wish it was more.
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