Archive for March, 2007

Dear Barbara,

I was reading the paper with interest over the last week and saw that the labor department has told us that job growth is up, however, as anyone living in the country today knows, so is our collective anxiety level about the jobs we are headed to or trying to hang onto.

As you know, I’ve been traveling around with my Fired project for over a year now and I feel very privileged that people share their stories with me. Okay, privileged and a little jet lagged.

Here are some stories from the road. It turns out that old adage that truth is funnier than fiction is really true as evidenced by some of these tales I have been told: here are a few of the truly inventive ways people have learned the news that their company was repositioning itself out of their position:

>From Orlando:
I worked in retail and my supervisor told me, “we’re promoting you to customer.”
A new euphemism from HR world,” We’re freeing you up for your future. “

>From Scottsdale:
“I was fired from a job in a cigar factory because I couldn’t stop crying the day John Lennon died.”

>From D.C.:
“Can you help me to get fired? I work for the IMF, we never fire anyone, that’s our problem!”
“I had given 30 days notice to my employer after securing a new position, thinking I had done the right thing. After about ten days went by, my supervisor called me in to say, “Your quitting just isn’t working out for us, we’re firing you!”

Countless people tell me that losing one job led them to a better job in a more appropriate workplace or provided the opportunity to start a new career even, and I am thrilled and impressed to hear how people take losing a job and turn it into an opportunity. I wasted much more time feeling sorry for myself when I was fired by Woody Allen than anyone I’ve met on the road. On the other hand, I can’t tell you how many people ask me to sign a book for their recently made redundant mom, dad, spouse, or for themselves as they feel they are about to be, as I heard recently, “unexpectedly leisured” and are quite frankly terrified. I just read Lou Uchitelle’s book “The Disposable American,” by the way, which chronicles the very devastating effects of being outsourced in riveting and disturbing detail — I couldn’t put it down — too bad it’s not fiction!

I hope people will enjoy my book, and it will give their spirits a lift — providing some humor and inspiration, but I also hope people will take my experience as a model and go out and talk to people about their experiences and take actions that can impact the lives of all of us. That is what the “getting fired” experience has done for me, for sure. This is one of the reasons I’m so excited about UP. For instance, I had heard about the legislation that the house passed to make it possible to form unions and not suffer punitive measures for doing so, and I wanted to read more about it, so last night I went to the site and an article was on the front page of the UP site — very useful. I know you have many goals for UP and I hope I can be a small part of this.

Okay, I have to tell you another story. I was speaking at the Bar Association Luncheon of Labor and Employment Attorneys in LA last week, and I was handed this story:

“ An employee of my law firm was fired after being promised a partner position. “Poor research skills” was the reason cited for his termination. He challenged this decision but the board found his presentation to them to good but “poorly researched.” Sometimes, you can’t win.

You know, as the mother of a child born with a severe birth defect, I share the worry that so many people I talk to share — that losing their job will mean losing their health care. After all, with his pre-existing condition, no one wants to insure my family except our union, so I hope we can build some momentum with UP that will ultimately lead to our country adopting a universal health plan.

Okay, I have to tell you one more story.

From D.C.:
Fired from job at Roy Roger’s restaurant for refusing to say “Howdy Partner” with enough enthusiasm.
You just can’t make that up!

Best,
Annabelle Gurwitch

I am a 51 year old woman who has spent the majority of her working life as a self-employed writer under the pen names Wendi Lee and W. W. Lee. Google my name and you will find that you can buy all 15 of my novels and short story collections for under $20 (including postage).

In 2001, I went through a major depression. I stopped writing and went to work part time as a legal assistant in a law firm specializing in foreclosures in the small Iowa town where I lived. In 2002, I moved to Minneapolis and got a job in the bankruptcy field as a post petition specialist, then switched jobs to work as a collections representative and finally, landed a job in a law firm as a probate collections legal assistant. Do you sense a pattern here?

During this period, I learned that the high stress in my life had contributed to my entrance into the world of Type 2 diabetes. In 2005, I left my husband and shortly after, had another major meltdown–this time spending 5 days in the nut hut and 90+ days on short-term disability. This netted me a termination from my legal firm for not fully recovering in the allotted 90 day period of FLMA time. I was advised to go on long-term disability, but I refused to because I come from Viking stock, and we may be depressed, melodramatic and angst-ridden (according to Ingmar Bergman), but we are also fierce, stubborn and resilient (according to Michael Crichton in “The 13th Warrior.”)

So I turned to unemployment insurance and decided to move to California to be with my elderly mother, who needed me. So now I take care of her needs and work a 40-hour week as a security officer for a large security firm. I am contracted out to one of the top 50 Fortune 500 (think Silicon Valley) and my health benefits suck–donkeys. It works this way: Think of the security company as a temp service for security-type folks. Only if you look at the larger temp agencies these days, they at least offer the semi-permanent temp worker benefits like health insurance and vacation pay after working a certain number of hours on behalf of the agency. At this security firm, they bolster you up with talk of making security a career and taking your job seriously. But in order to land a lucrative contract with these Fortune 500 companies, the security firm is willing to sell its workers out at the lowest possible benefits. The agency makes great claims about paying the highest hourly wage, but they sell us out to land those contracts by giving their potential clients a menu of health benefit options that read like the veritable Chinese menu (Column A: Great health plan, Column B: Good health plan, Column C: Sucky health plan only a moderately healthy MacDonald’s fryer specialist would find acceptable).

Invariably, the client always chooses Column C in order to balance out the “high hourly wages” they are paying us. And then they all wonder why most of us become jaded and discouraged after just a few months, and eventually leave. On my health plan, I was supposed to get free dental. Turns out I have been paying $15 a paycheck for my “free dental.” I would gladly give up my free dental to get my anxiety medication at a reasonable co-pay (right now, there is no generic and I am unable to afford to have anxiety).

By the way, I have left messages regarding this issue with my so-called benefits advisor at the security company several times and have not yet gotten a call back. Barbara E, I just finished Bait and Switch (and had previously read Nickel and Dimed), and you are an inspiration to me. If you need a lobbyist, call me. ;) LOL

ANNABELLE GURWITCH is finally done being fired. Four years after Woody Allen abruptly dismissed the L.A.-based actress from a play he was directing — telling her, among other things, that her reading of the part made her seem “retarded” — Gurwitch has come to the end of her multifaceted, multimedia journey of self-discovery.

Like all good baby boomers, Gurwitch took the personal and made it political. And professional. First was the stage work — “Fired: Tales of Jobs Gone Bad,” which began at Comedy Central Los Angeles, moved to off-Broadway and has appeared in venues throughout the country. Last year, the book “Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized and Dismissed” came out, along with www.firedbyannabellegurwitch.com/. And now “Fired!” the documentary is opening Friday at the Laemmle Grand.

“Finally I can walk away,” says Gurwitch, who, though she’s best known as the host of TBS’ “Dinner and a Movie,” has gotten used to being referred to as “the fired lady.” “I’ve done what I can, I did what I set out to do.”

That was, at first, to make herself feel better. By telling everyone she knew, and even people she didn’t, that she had been fired by Allen, a man she considered, even after the whole Mia Farrow/Soon Yi scandal, a demi-god. She discovered to her surprise that almost everyone she knew had a story about being fired, and she began collecting them, through staged readings and then the book.

“With the book, I thought it would make a great present, you know, for someone who had just been fired,” she says. “Because when it happens you feel so devastated, so alone, it’s important to know that you aren’t.”

Along the way, Gurwitch says, she began to notice that getting fired was a bit of a national trend — that corporate mergers and the downsizing of American companies meant an awful lot of people were facing life without a paycheck or health insurance.

“The month I was fired something like 160,000 New Yorkers lost their job. Maybe not all by Woody Allen,” she adds with a laugh, “but that’s a lot of people. It really opened my eyes.”

Gurwitch is small and slender with attractively mussed hair and a Spider-Man T-shirt under her black pinstriped suit. Sitting in the Alcove in Los Feliz, she is surrounded by hip mamas and guys in black T-shirts and retro aviator shades, people who all look as if they might have gotten fired by Woody Allen and wound up getting a book and documentary out of it. It’s a discrete demographic, native mostly to L.A. and New York — the creative type with just enough insight, chutzpah and narcissism to see within the unfolding of her daily life a message for the world, whether delivered through NPR essay (which Gurwitch also does) or documentary film.

“Fired!” the film follows Gurwitch’s personal journey in form as well as content. It opens with a dozen or so entertainers, including Tim Allen, Illeana Douglas, Anne Meara, Sarah Silverman, Jeff Garlin and David Cross, sharing their stories of being fired.

“All of the people I interviewed were my friends,” she says. “I didn’t consider calling people I didn’t know. I had all these great stories from doing the stage shows already.”

But “Fired!” then moves past the comfort zone of having successful entertainers share their embarrassing moments and dives into the less soothing world of “real people” — office and factory workers who have lost their jobs — and their health insurance. She goes to Lansing, Mich., deep in Michael Moore territory, and finds more of the same — factories closing, corporate downsizing, layoffs in the double and triple digits.

“I could have done several different films,” Gurwitch says. “I could have done all serious, or I could have done all funny. But I, we — the directors and I — decided to follow the narrative of how I got fired and then what happened, including how I noticed suddenly that everywhere I looked there was downsizing.”

In the film, this is at times an uneasy marriage, with strange albeit interesting connections — Gurwitch interviews a former White House chef because he is, she says, the only person in Washington to admit to being fired. Fortunately, Gurwitch never pretends to be more than she is — an actress who got fired, had a sort of epiphany and is interested in following its ripples. She intentionally, and wisely, left the analyses to professional economists (although one of these is Ben Stein, as well known for his movie and television roles as any Greenspan gravitas).

“There are so many nights when I lay awake and wonder if I put the right things in the movie,” she says. “Jeff Garlin asked me what percent of the movie that I wanted to make got in there, and at first I said 90. Now I think it’s closer to 70. Thank God for DVD extras. Mine are like 90 minutes, which is longer than the film.”

She takes issue with those who say she took her firing and turned it into a cottage industry. “Believe me, no one makes a documentary to make money,” she says. “You make a documentary because you believe so much in a subject that you can’t not make it.”

There is no doubt that Gurwitch is passionate about the issue that has taken over the last four years of her life. Far beyond her original hope of making people feel better, she hopes her film will start a national conversation that will lead to some sort of reform; the fired stories she continues to collect, she says, prove this country desperately needs to address unemployment. She recently joined United Professionals, an organization begun by Barbara Ehrenreich that, according to its website, provides support for “all unemployed, underemployed and anxiously employed” white collar workers.

“We’re very excited because there’s a new Congress,” Gurwitch says. “We hope to give labor a voice. People who don’t have unions. We’re hoping to found a healthcare fund.”

After her four years listening to tales of the outsourced, she has a few pieces of advice. First, try to get other people fired with you “so you have some drinking buddies.” Read the newspaper, so you aren’t the last to know that your company’s merger is going to mean your dismissal. And don’t be complacent — the days of a gold watch at the end of 30 years are gone.

“You should always be thinking about what you can do next,” she says.

As an entertainer, she has a natural empathy for that sort of uncertainty. “We’re all essentially freelance,” she says. “So we’ve constantly reinvented ourselves. You have to. I read this column about how older women who are fired should dye their hair and cut 10 years off their résumé. I mean, actresses have known that for years. Of course, IMDB has totally blown it for us now, but still…. ”

Her stint in quasi-political activism now over, Gurwitch is returning to her “normal” life. Her essays appear on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Day to Day,” and she and her husband recently sold a pilot idea to Lifetime. They are also working on a book together, tentatively titled “How Not to Have a Marriage Like Ours.” She’s also back to acting, doing auditions for pilot season, with a new attitude toward things she took for granted.

“I think every actress should produce a documentary,” she says with a laugh. “When you’re the one raising the money, when you are writing the check, you really appreciate the people who do it for you. In the middle of all this, I did a ‘Boston Legal,’ and I was so grateful to have a dressing room, as opposed to changing in my car. To have a hair stylist and makeup, it was just amazing.”

I was laid off as a Materials Manager in 2003. Rather than jump back on the full-time work treadmill, I was able to scale back my lifestyle and do consulting part time. With time on my hands for the first time in 27 years, I became very involved with Democratic political activism (a Deaniac, in fact).

I’m currently volunteering as Issues Director with my county Dem Party and represent my district as e-board rep on the CA Dem Party. Part of me is glad that my eyes have been opened to the right-wing war on workers, the campaign against labor unions, tax policies to disempower the middle class, etc., something that wouldn’t have been possible if I was still working 12 hours a day.

But I know not everyone has the options I did. I’m glad to contribute to what I hope will be a resurgence in political influence and involvement by and on behalf of workers in this country. Without that, I fear America will go the way of every other military colonial power before us — bankruptcy and irrelevance.

With 30 years’ experience, I’m now being paid entry-level wages, and am forced to perform the equivalent of two full-time positions. At my income level, I don’t qualify for the mortgage for a “low-income” housing purchase in my community. I’m the “senior” employee, constantly picking up the slack for the “20-somethings” who are paid more than I am. The Medical Insurance benefit is what’s preventing me from leaving.

On March 1, the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800 - http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/) passed the House (241-185). Created by a bi-partisan coalition consisting of Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.) the EFCA will give employees back the opportunity to join and form unions by:

• Establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.
• Providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
• Allowing employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation. (AFL-CIO)

But before the bill can become law it must pass the Senate and see the light of President Bush’s pen, so don’t start singing Billy Bragg’s “There is Power in a Union” just yet.
In fact workers in America may be humming a different tune especially since Vice President Dick Cheney let it slip in a recent speech to the National Association of Manufacturers, a group who has seen most of their jobs and industry shipped elsewhere, that the President will veto the bill anyway. If that happens, the only recourse is for a 2/3rds majority override of the veto by Congress.

I first became aware of the bill through my friend, Lisa May, a high school history and social studies teacher in Florida who sent out an email to everyone she knew about contacting our local reps to get the bill pushed through. She’s had plenty of union experience whereas I, however, work in an industry that has no real union representation or, seemingly, a glimmer of hope for one (welcome to the world of IT).

She tells me labor unions were given legal status in the U.S. in 1935 by The Wagner Act also known as the National Labor Relations Act.

“Once unions were legalized workers started forming and joining unions like crazy,” she says. “But in 1955 The Taft-Hartley Act, aka Labor-Management Relations Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft-hartley_act) was passed, which made organizing unions more difficult.” The Act was originally vetoed by President Harry Truman who labeled it a “slave-labor bill” but the Republican majority overrode the veto and passed the bill into law.

It’s ironic how the tables are switched these days, but will there be enough of a majority vote to override the imminent veto?

The Taft-Hartley Act also allowed states to pass “right-to-work” laws that made union shops illegal. So, while the NLRA gave unions the green light to operate for worker’s rights, the LMRA changed it to red and gave employers sharper knives to use to cut out unions in their shops.

“Managers would put employees through union busting meetings – workers were required to go to these meetings and during this campaign time unions were not allowed to be on company ground. It was intimidating to workers and made it difficult for workers to join because of the tricks employers would do,” May says.

“American workers have no idea how much the unions do for them. The [Republican] congress tried to get rid of overtime pay – they were trying to reclassify workers as salary workers to avoid paying overtime,” May explains. “The AFL-CIO was the only group fighting against them.”

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) have their fight cut out for them now as the wave of anti-EFCA propaganda hits the media from labor lawyers (union busters) and otherwise. Just recently, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an opinion piece penned by Richard Hankins, an Atlanta labor lawyer, not 24 hours after the bill passed the House. He claims that the bill will have “unintended devastating effects on the workers the unions claim to protect” and, oh my God what if Wal-Mart were to experience unionization of their thousands of underpaid, no-benefit employees – “One can easily imagine than an employer such as the retail giant Wal-Mart — a prime target of today’s unions — might choose the temporary inconvenience of a lockout over permitting an arbitrator to topple the first domino that could lead to a nationwide loss of control.”

Too bad Hankins wasn’t in the room while the House mediated for five hours about the EFCA on March 1. Testimonies from workers about harassment, job termination, threats of plants closing, intimidation and physical assault by employers and their lackeys to keep them from forming or joining a union filled out the debate and gave the bill’s bi-partisan authors plenty of ammunition to help it pass.

John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO states, “Because of today’s vote, the future looks a little brighter to all Americans who have watched corporations celebrate record profits, but have themselves been shut out of the party, left with stagnant wages and facing soaring costs. A union card is the single best ticket into the middle-class and, thanks to the Employee Free Choice Act, working people may finally have the chance to be part of a union.”

We unrepresented workers can only hope. So keep those cards and letters going to our elected officials to make sure the EFCA gets a fighting chance. Go to the AFL-CIO’s site at http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/ and follow the prompts under Take Action.
Videos of speeches from the House during the debate:
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=74

As a part-time college lecturer, I teach more credit hours than tenured professors. I don’t qualify for a pension plan or have any benefits. Also, there is no job security or consistent schedule from one semester to the next and you are at the mercy of department chairs.

I know several part-time or adjunct faculty members who teach at three institutions of higher learning just to make ends meet. All have a Master’s degree and many have their Ph.D. degree. Majority of these teaching professionals are making less than $32,000 and often working 50+ hours a week. Most are not provided adequate office space or storage areas. However, we must save all paperwork for one year to ‘defend’ or protect ourselves should a student appeal their grade.

On April 19, 2004, with the stroke of a pen, Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger signed into law SB 899 (comprehensive reformation of Workers Compensation Law). By so doing, he condemned not only every injured worker in California from that day forward, but those that represented their interests, to a future of frustration and poverty.

I subsequently closed my practice and attempted to gain employment with any government agency. My first sojourn was with a local county as a Child Support Attorney. This was a county that had 12% of its population not paying the court ordered child support obligations. I had taken a 60% cut in pay, but was thankful that I no longer had to pay $3,000/month for health/disability/malpractice insurance. Unfortunately, I was attorney #8, in that position, in just the past 5 years. Turns out, there was a reason for that. At the time I resigned, there were two other cases in various stages of litigation by my predecessors (including the CA Ct of Appeals).

Suffice it to say, I moved on. Currently, I am working part-time, billing on an hourly basis, and sending off resumes by the bushelfuls. I have travelled all over Northern California to attend job interviews. Because of the lack of billable hours, I have had to give up my COBRA health benefits as they became unaffordable.

Due to the fact that I have 15 years of legal experience and I am a Vietnam combat veteran, by law all governemnt agencies are required to grant me an interview for virtually any job opening. When I walk in the door of the interview room and the children situated around the table see my gray hair and wrinkles, they have already made up their minds that I am not right for the position.

My wife has suggested that I dye my hair and beard. But if there is one thing, in this life, that I find most distasteful is hypocrisy. And I guess I am not very good at blowing smoke up anyone’s skirt. Yesterday, I interviewed with the local District Attorney’s office for a job that I used to do. The 3 kids that interviewed me decided that I did not score well enough to pass their initial interview, and therefore move on to the final stage of employment procurement. I guess life ain’t easy for a boy named Siouxx.

I heard Barbara on the radio and wanted to support this site. I’m in my late 40’s and I’m concerned about continued employment. I just want this country to support all its people, not just the rich.

I am doing okay as a mental health counselor, working hard but loving my work. I am hoping to work longer than 65 years (I’ll be 65 this year) because we have no retirement savings or pensions. Also, I pay a high amount for health insurance and have an illness that is chronic and could be debilitating in the future.

I have worked as an independent therapist for 25 years (private practice). I would love to hear what is happening with other people my age and support others as the corporations treat employees like disposable objects. My husband worked as a medical supply/pharmaceutical salesman for 30 years and was laid off a year ago because he didn’t have a degree. I am now the main wage earner for our family.

Barbara, I heard you on Cspan last night and am so grateful for your work! I have a little 21 month old granddaughter who shares her colds with me too!