If These Are Good Times, What Will Bad Times Be Like?
by Leonard I. SchneideLink to article
I am writing from New York City.
Two lifeboats for the unemployed are no longer afloat. 1. temp and low paid
work. 2. The civil service.
1.You can no longer walk into a temp agency and expect to be hired. The temp agencies have relationships with organizations or schools or government agencies that train and do background checks and physical exams. The temp agencies and employers get tax breaks and the like in return for this exclusive. This applies to hiring by Best Buy, Circuit City, the Fast Foods, etc.
2. There are no longer any must-hire-when-your-name-comes-up civil service lists. They take whom they like — friends, relatives, friendly referrals. Like the temp agencies they also have their organizational feeds. The one out of three rule permits them to everlastingly exclude someone who has a perfect test score in favor of someone with a lower score. There are people who will be always number 3 out of 3 and this person never gets hired; when the agency runs out of openings or wants new blood, they start another list. There is also the Provisional racket where the connected few are hired in bulk long before a new
list is promulgated. When the list appears, any passing grade makes them permanent and often an experience paper is the test.
The American Dream is no more and the fact that this colossal change is permanent has not sunk in; I sympathize with the denial. At any age, any experience or educational level, it is hard to get a secure, civilized job. Lose such a job and it can be like losing your life, forever stuck at a low economic level.
The media and government lie in unison. Many college grads, even at the master’s level, have to be supported by their parents for months after graduation. This applies to new lawyers who have passed the bar and received their license.
If these are good times, what will bad times be like?
Tags: civil-service, temp-agencies
April 27th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
We are in a depression now for the average person.
It’s just not in the news.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Yes, things have definitely changed with temp agencies. Interview with them, then once again interview with the company that is “thinking” about hiring you.
PLUS, many of the postings on jobs sites are linked to temp. agencies. You’ll be directed to the temp’s site, (Gadball/DataFrenzy) to fill out the info all over again.
Then in two days, you’re inundated with hundreds of Spam messages!
January 13th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I could easily identify with what you had to say in your article: “If These Are Good Times, What Will Bad Times Be Like?” and thank you for sharing your experience.
I often did temp work for various corporations back in the 1980’s and 90’s when I was unemployed and couldn’t find work due to a recession and/or pervasive age discrimination. It was often embarrassing for me because many younger people working for these corporations couldn’t understand why I couldn’t secure a position in-keeping with my educational level and experience. Not surprisingly, these same arrogant young people oftentimes blamed the victim rather than the system. Perhaps today these same naive people understand better now what they wouldn’t or couldn’t understand back then. The only difference now is that it has gotten worse due to a global economy, the outsourcing of American white collar jobs overseas, and the misuse and abuse of the working visa by Corporate America in order to preserve their bottom line.
Despite holding three university degrees that include a B.S. in Business Management/English, M.F.A. in English & Writing and M.A. in Creative Writing, including a diploma in Television & Radio Broadcast Communication, I was still considered ‘unemployable’ and ‘overqualified’ in a job market that places a premium on youth over maturity and experience.
Nor surprisingly, I was eventually forced into early retirement at the ‘ripe old age’ of forty-nine in 1996. Today, my highly educated and experienced brothers, and many of my baby boomer relatives and friends are retired too — often 10, 15 plus years before what was once considered normal retirement age at sixty-five.
In the early and mid 1990’s, I wrote a number of articles about the plight of mature workers and two were titled: “Middle-age workers being left out of the U.S. work force” and “For better or for worse, boomers return to the nest.” I also wrote the following article below titled “What Were You Thinking?” for United Professionals and would like to share it with you.
Perhaps Barbara Jordan’s last remarks at the Democratic National Convention in 1992 summarized it best: “The American Dream isn’t dead – but it’s gasping for breath.”
Alan
Baby Boomer
Darien, Connecticut
What Were You Thinking?
Link to article
My story by Alan King (Darien, CT)
“Everybody is getting fired. I’m telling you thousands of people are losing their jobs. And you know who’s losing — who’s getting it pretty big? My gang! You know what they call a 50-year-old person in a large corporation? Fat!” That is how one middle-age white-collar worker described his situation on the Phil Donahue Show in 1993. Little did I realize that in three years at the age of forty-nine, I would be forced into early retirement too.
It was a beautiful spring morning in 1996 when I lost my second Sales Management position at another IT company within six months after starting my job. Despite being complimented by my boss on my sales, communication, writing and people skills only two weeks earlier, I found myself once again being replaced by a much younger, and less qualified person.
After a year of what seemed like endless letter writing, interviews and rejections, I began to notice something peculiar about the Corporate World and the companies I visited. It seemed that everywhere I went the majority of employees, including my interviewers, appeared much younger than myself. In fact, many looked not much older than my daughter. One day as I sat in the waiting room before my interview, it suddenly occurred to me. Despite looking much younger than my years, I realized that I was that 50-year-old person in a large corporation. “Fat!”
After a discouraging fruitless year of job searching, it became apparent to me that I needed to make a drastic career change, and it wasn’t long before I was heading-off to graduate school to fulfill a life-long dream. I ended up graduating at the top of my class with highest honors after earning both a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing and Master of Fine Arts degree in English & Writing. By now, I was confident that the world of work would be a better place, and that it would embrace me as the university had done years before.
One day an acquaintance of mine who was a full-time researcher for her company told me about a new position opening for a writer, and encouraged me to apply. After reading the company’s job description on their website, I told her I thought I was overqualified. “Nonsense,” she replied, and insisted that I email her my resume ASAP. A month later, our paths crossed again, and I asked her about the position. “Oh,” she said, with an exasperated tone, “You’re overqualified!” By now, it was obvious to me that the term “overqualified” was the favorite euphemism of Corporate America and had become the code word for “You’re too old!”
Still, I was determined not to give-up and accepted an interview with a former senior executive recruiter of a top international job placement firm. He held my two-page resume in front of him with both hands as we sat across from each other around the circular table. After what seemed like an awful long time, he finally laid the resume down and looked-up. “You have very impressive academic credentials,” he said, with a warm smile. We talked for a while and he asked me what was I thinking when I decided to go to graduate school. His demeanor suggested that I had spent all those years in prison. He leaned back in his chair and sighed once again. And then he abruptly asked me, “How old are you?”
Although my first reaction was one of outrage that he would even consider this question, nevertheless, I responded without hesitation. “54″ I said confidently. Several more seconds elapsed and the silence seemed unbearably long.
“Oh!” He continued. Only this time his face appeared strained. Before I could say another word he shot back. “Well, you can forget about going back to corporate. . . you can forget about teaching. . . and you can forget about publishing too.”
Postscript: After unsuccessfully looking for a writing position on-and-off for six-years during a severe recession and following the aftermath of 9/11, like thousands of middle-age white-collar workers today faced with age discrimination, I accepted early retirement in 1996 at the age of forty-nine.
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