thumbnail of Gisholt: Death of a Factory; No. 8; Unemployment, Part 1. Get a Job
Transcript
Hide -
<v Host>Gisholt: Death of the Factory. A series of programs about termination and unemployment. <v Host>The 8th program in the series is called Unemployment One. <v Host>Get a job. The worker's point of view. <v Unemployed Speaker 1>The people that are working. No, they don't. <v Unemployed Speaker 1>I mean, you got to be unemployed for a while to realize what <v Unemployed Speaker 1>[pause] what it's like to be without a job, without an income. <v Unemployed Speaker 1>People talk about no jobs and people unemployment. <v Unemployed Speaker 1>You hear it on the radio, on TV percentage. <v Unemployed Speaker 1>You got to be unemployed to really know what it's like, what they're talking about. <v Unemployed Speaker 2>When you're kind of you're down in the sea, you're out of a job. <v Unemployed Speaker 2>It seems like, you know, how like you look at the statistics <v Unemployed Speaker 2>or you look at a figure of unemployment at 6 percent or 5.9. <v Unemployed Speaker 2>Whatever it is. But um I don't know if you have a little more feeling <v Unemployed Speaker 2>for these people, even though I'm back working now, I still have a feeling <v Unemployed Speaker 2>for these people and people who have been working during this time. <v Unemployed Speaker 2>And when lost a job, I can tell there's a lot of people who do not appreciate
<v Unemployed Speaker 2>what they do have or if they do have their security in that that <v Unemployed Speaker 2>uh they take many things for granted and don't really know. <v Unemployed Speaker 2>The next day could be their last day. <v Host>In January 1971, the Giddings and Lewis Corporation announced the closing <v Host>of its subsidiary, the Gisholt Machine Company. <v Host>What happened to the 1200 terminated workers? <v Host>Some of the older men dropped out of the labor force temporarily on rocking chair <v Host>money, unemployment compensation and supplemental employment pay. <v Host>Some permanently left the labor force before or at 65 if they had received <v Host>pensions. Some of the women also decided not to look for employment if they could <v Host>be supported by working husbands. <v Host>And if their wages from Gisholt had not been essential to the family's income. <v Host>Approximately 50 to 100 men remained at work in the foundry, wondering <v Host>whether it would remain open, whether their jobs would last. <v Host>Hoping to ride it out long enough to get a pension.
<v Host>Most of the men and women who were terminated had to look for new jobs. <v Host>Some of the older workers who had only known 1 kind of job or 1 company and who <v Host>hadn't gone job hunting in over 10 years, found unemployment a difficult situation. <v Host>But younger workers who had been at Gisholt for only a few years also felt insecure on <v Host>what 1 worker called the breadline. <v Host>They also wondered where and how to look for a job. <v Host>What was it like to be unemployed? Where did the men look for work? <v Host>First men applied at the largest companies in town, like Oscar Meyer or companies with <v Host>work most closely related to Gisholts': Ohio medical products, <v Host>?Rayovac, the Kip?and the St. Regis Company. <v Host>The men read ads in the newspaper and followed through on tips from friends. <v Host>They applied for work and unemployment compensation at the State Employment Service. <v Host>Some of the men were lucky, but most of the workers didn't find the jobs they were <v Host>looking for. As their unemployment compensation ran out, many men had to <v Host>accept jobs they didn't want. <v Host>Most of the workers agreed that being unemployed, being unable to find jobs they felt
<v Host>trained for, or even being employed at jobs they had to take was a degrading <v Host>and depressing experience. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>Well, it's very it's very degrading to begin with. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>It's it's uh it's extremely hard on the on the morale. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>Simply because it's 20 years, 20 years has passed before you've <v Unemployed Speaker 3>had to go out and look for a job. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>Basically the whole method and procedures are same of finding a job, but you don't <v Unemployed Speaker 3>necessarily know how to go about doing it. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>The attitudes of personnel people are different. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>It's just a hard thing to do with a. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>The first one, it was really rough because you didn't really know how to approach <v Unemployed Speaker 3>them on what what what they expect of you. <v Unemployed Speaker 3>And uh you'll begin to realize that uh <v Unemployed Speaker 3>you're just a number or a name and the human factor <v Unemployed Speaker 3>really isn't much. At least, until you are your hired. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Okay. You'd want to come into register with the Wisconsin State Employment Service.
<v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>We're located at 206 North Plum Street here in Madison, at the corner of Broome and <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Dayton streets. Uh come in the front door to the registration desk, uh <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>tell the girl there what you want. Now, some people come in who are not unemployed, they <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>just want to change jobs. At any rate, if you're just seeking to change jobs or if you <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>want a job, we'll give you an application cart to fill out. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>They'll be registering with us. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Uh the information on this card will be put into our computer system. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Uh chances are you'll go back to see an interviewer uh the first day that you're <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>here. Just so he can get some more facts and fully complete your application card. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>And so that he will, he or she, will make sure that your card is put into our computer <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>system. <v Unemployed Speaker 4>Oh I sat here and typed on a typewriter. <v Unemployed Speaker 4>I answered every ad I could find and hundreds of em uh <v Unemployed Speaker 4>3 quarters of em, nobody ever answered you. Blamed ads in the paper, <v Unemployed Speaker 4>that's a waste of time.
<v Unemployed Speaker 4>At 57 years of age, it's a waste of time to even answer one. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>For those people who would have some difficulty in uh finding <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>unemployment, they might not be as employable. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>They do, for those who do want more personal service, they would uh go back to <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>see interviewers on their successive visits back to the office. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>And uh for those people who have uh acute problems and finding work, <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>uh they may have physical or emotional handicaps or uh ?inaudible? <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Police record, they may have a poor work history. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Uh they may have monetary problems. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Whatever the reason, if they are very hard to place, we have a counseling <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>uh unit for them and they can talk in some depth to vocational counselors who can <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>offer them advice, uh placement assistance, if necessary <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>aptitude testing. <v Unemployed Speaker 5>Um it's an it's an unpleasant experience. <v Unemployed Speaker 5>I did have a workman's compensation.
<v Unemployed Speaker 5>I mean, far 34 weeks, uh which wasn't so <v Unemployed Speaker 5>bad. But uh it does uh with family situation and being <v Unemployed Speaker 5>as it is, it does. <v Unemployed Speaker 5>uh put the pressure so we do have expenses that <v Unemployed Speaker 5>uh make it necessary for me to get something in the near future. <v Employment Worker>Well, the first thing we're going to want to know is where you've worked <v Employment Worker>in the last year. <v Employment Worker>Because to be eligible, a person must have at least 18 <v Employment Worker>weeks of covered employment. <v Employment Worker>Or if they don't have 18 weeks of covered employment, they must have 10 weeks <v Employment Worker>of covered unemployment, plus a 1000 dollars in outside uh <v Employment Worker>employment, not covered under their law. <v Employment Worker>The unemployment compensation program aims <v Employment Worker>at providing income to an employee while he's looking for another <v Employment Worker>job.
<v Employment Worker>A while back, an employer told me that he thought what we did was <v Employment Worker>pay people to look to stay unemployed. <v Employment Worker>But basically our approach is that we want to pay people to look for work <v Employment Worker>when they're trying to find a job. They should be entitled to benefits. <v Employment Worker>They first must register with the Employment Service and Employment Service, tries to <v Employment Worker>find them work kids, a free agency for that purpose. <v Employment Worker>If they can't find them work, then we are to help provide them with income <v Employment Worker>in order to keep them going. <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>I was looking for 6 months. <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>I was unemployed for 6 months before um I finally um landed <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>a job. And um not once did the unemployment office come <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>up with an interview for me. But I know at least 6 times, I had easily 6 interviews. <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>Now where where was the employment office going wrong? <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>Why couldn't they find these same interviews? <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>I would have 2 different times. <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>I was called in and say, what are you doing?
<v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>Looking for a job? So I I had given 1 time this man <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>at the employment office listed 20 firms for different employers that had computers <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>and I insist "there's my list" Now I insist, "what have you done for me <v Unemplyoed Speaker 6>in the last 3 or 4 weeks to help me find the job?" He had no answer. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>Our computers uh receive information from every job <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>or that we get in our system and tries to match it against all the individuals <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>in our active applicant file. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>So in essence, the computer is continually looking for workers for each new job order <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>we get. So in this respect, it's a don't call <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>us, we'll call you situation whereby if the computer does find something for a particular <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>individual, uh we can call them in or send them a voicecard <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>and tell them that we have something that they might be interested in. <v Wisconsin State Employment Service Worker>And then, we simply call the applicant. <v Unemployed Speaker 7>We had gone through 3 of them in Seattle and I'd still kept my job. <v Unemployed Speaker 7>And you get to the point where you become overly sure
<v Unemployed Speaker 7>of yourself thinking that you had weathered 3 of these programs in <v Unemployed Speaker 7>Seattle and it can't happen to me. <v Unemployed Speaker 7>But then suddenly you got a phone call from your boss, says, sorry, <v Unemployed Speaker 7>but as a day after tomorrow, we don't need you anymore. <v Unemployed Speaker 7>What do you do? You go home and say, well, it hit and you pick up all the things <v Unemployed Speaker 7>you can and scrape it together and and decide, should I hit the road <v Unemployed Speaker 7>and get out of Madison and try other places where there is industry? <v Unemployed Speaker 7>Or do you just spend a lot of money on long distance phone calls to people that you know <v Unemployed Speaker 7>in these cities and ask him what the labor market is like? <v Unemployed Speaker 7>And they in turn tell you, don't come here "There's just nothing here. <v Unemployed Speaker 7>I've been laid off myself." <v Unemployed Speaker 8>It was an 8 hour day. It was worse in the workday than uh out looking <v Unemployed Speaker 8>for a job itself and working itself, it was harder looking for a job than it was working. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>I resent the uh having to beg,
<v Unemployed Speaker 9>and this is what you're doing uh I'm over 40 years of age <v Unemployed Speaker 9>and now suddenly I've got to start from scratch again. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>Uh I was offered a job at another company here while I was still working at Gisholt. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>The man offered me a job at about a 1000 dollars more a year than what I <v Unemployed Speaker 9>was making. I went back after I was laid off and I went back. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>That job was still available, but suddenly that dropped almost 5000 dollars in <v Unemployed Speaker 9>value. They say it's an employer's market and this is what kills <v Unemployed Speaker 9>you. <v Host>When many of the workers returned to the labor market. <v Host>They realized that Madison was unprepared for Gisholt's Closing. <v Host>The men were essentially on their own in the job hunt. <v Host>Offices of the State Employment Service placed as many men as they could. <v Host>Approximately 15 percent of those who applied. <v Host>But the employment service could only offer the men jobs that had been processed with <v Host>their office. If an employer didn't file a job order with the employment service, <v Host>the men wouldn't be called in.
<v Host>Some plant shut down studies have indicated that a man's own initiative and the advice of <v Host>friends are sometimes more successful factors in job placement than employment <v Host>services. There were few jobs available in Madison requiring the same or <v Host>similar skills that the men had had at Gisholt. <v Host>Workers were reminded that Madison is a light industrial community. <v Host>Most of its companies are small and the job market can only accommodate so many workers. <v Host>At the time the workers were terminated from Gisholt, there was a general recession not <v Host>only in the machine tool industry, but in other industries as well. <v Host>Unemployment figures rose and there was little hiring either in Madison or in more <v Host>industrial cities to the southeast. <v Host>Some of the men also learned that the skills they had acquired at Gisholt were not <v Host>transferable to other jobs and other companies. <v Host>They were job related or specialized skills, valuable and well-paid at Gisholt, <v Host>but not necessarily elsewhere. <v Host>At the time of closing, Professor Gerald Summers of the University of Wisconsin was <v Host>conducting a survey on training and skill acquisition at Gisholt for the Department of <v Host>Labor. When termination was announced, Professor Summers staffed, did an early follow
<v Host>up study of the men. <v Professor Summers>Of those who were most easily uh employed in other occupations <v Professor Summers>and other firms. Skilled and semi-skilled workers <v Professor Summers>um found employment much more readily than the unskilled workers. <v Professor Summers>Presumably those who uh received the most training at Gisholt and <v Professor Summers>had the most uh investment in their skill development earlier were the ones <v Professor Summers>who were uh able to find employment most readily after. <v Professor Summers>Also from the standpoint of earnings, those <v Professor Summers>who maintained their earnings best after the plant shut down <v Professor Summers>were those who were able to obtain employment in jobs most closely <v Professor Summers>related to their Gisholt job. <v Professor Summers>The further they had to depart from what they were doing at Gisholt, usually <v Professor Summers>almost invariably in a downward direction the greater their income drop, <v Professor Summers>even if they were employed after Gisholt uh shut down
<v Professor Summers>and this perhaps is not overly surprising. <v Professor Summers>This is somewhat typical of um semi-skilled workers who have a skill <v Professor Summers>that is important in a particular plant, and I guess they <v Professor Summers>begin to think of themselves as skilled. <v Professor Summers>And in some ways they're making a very important contribution in a particular kind of <v Professor Summers>plant or industry. It's not true only of Gishot. <v Professor Summers>In fact, perhaps less of Gisholt than some of those and other <v Professor Summers>plant shutdown studies like the meatpackers and the armor <v Professor Summers>plants or the coal miners uh we usually classify them as semiskilled. <v Professor Summers>But it's a skill that's particular to that industry or company <v Professor Summers>and they're fairly highly paid. <v Professor Summers>But when they're laid off, they find that it is not a transferable skill <v Professor Summers>that although is very important in the industry or company in which <v Professor Summers>they were working previously.
<v Professor Summers>It's not really needed, not wanted in most other industries <v Professor Summers>or plants in the community, especially in a community such as Madison, which isn't a <v Professor Summers>highly industrialized community, not much of an industrial mix. <v Professor Summers>So that many of these workers who were getting high wages at Gisholt <v Professor Summers>found that they simply couldn't transfer that skill to other companies that had a high <v Professor Summers>productive contribution only at Gisholt. <v Professor Summers>On the other hand, something like a tool and die maker is a universally <v Professor Summers>needed high skill and is transferable. <v Professor Summers>And uh this is, I think, the distinction between the truly skilled workers classified <v Professor Summers>as skilled in the dictionary of occupational titles and those who thought of themselves <v Professor Summers>a skill because they're doing a fairly high paid job at Gisholt, but we're really <v Professor Summers>classified as semiskilled. <v Host>John Dorsey writes in the Mac cases in unemployment, quote, "Most workers <v Host>felt a strong geographic attachment to their area. <v Host>They owned homes. They had children in school.
<v Host>They had friends and relatives in the area and were active in civic affairs. <v Host>Workers who found new jobs after the shutdown were in general earning much less than they <v Host>had received at Mac. Most of them were dissatisfied with their new jobs and were still <v Host>searching for other employment", unquote. <v Host>In his article, Consequences of Plant Closure, A study of the armor plant closing in <v Host>Kansas City. James Stern writes that each additional year of age tended to depress <v Host>a worker's annual earnings, while each additional year of education increased them. <v Host>Quote, "Although the studies that were conducted more than a year after the shutdown do <v Host>not prove that this drop in relative income position is permanent, it appears likely <v Host>that it is. The 40 year old worker with 15 years seniority who starts a <v Host>new in the job market, competes on less favorable terms than he did when he found his <v Host>former job" unquote, at Gisholt. <v Host>The older worker tended to remain unemployed longer. <v Host>His new job paid relatively less than the Gisholt job. <v Host>The older a worker was, and the longer he had been in the community, the less likely he
<v Host>was able to relocate, transfer or retrain. <v Host>Professor Summers has concluded that at Gisholt, some men may have become so discouraged <v Host>that they left the labor force entirely. <v Unemployed Speaker 8>This guy, Harry Hopper and I worked in the same office for, <v Unemployed Speaker 8>well, 15 years. Back to back with our desk <v Unemployed Speaker 8>and he is working for the city, Zula, here. <v Unemployed Speaker 8>He is 57 years old, same as I am. <v Unemployed Speaker 8>The only thing he could find at his age. <v Unemployed Speaker 8>They keep telling you that. <v Unemployed Speaker 8>There's no discrimination about age or anything else but they all write so <v Unemployed Speaker 8>you wrote your education isn't uh what they require or <v Unemployed Speaker 8>uh your height or your health or something. <v Unemployed Speaker 8>You have something something. They got some excuse to give your other <v Unemployed Speaker 8>than age. But we all know that it's age because <v Unemployed Speaker 8>they sh away from me in a hurry. <v Different Speaker>You can't really um document anything like this.
<v Different Speaker>This is really subjective uh question. <v Different Speaker>I'm sure that there are cases, no matter where you go in any labor market <v Different Speaker>throughout the country where there are uh questions of discrimination. <v Different Speaker>Undoubtedly you will find some discrimination, but it would you would <v Different Speaker>possibly be of a nature whereby, you know, <v Different Speaker>nothing could be proved by it. <v Different Speaker>It's hard to say because something like this discrimination can be covered up <v Different Speaker>to look like it's not discrimination. <v Different Speaker>You know, it's it's a very subjective, hazy matter. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>It was hard enough to find a job, but they don't want anybody looking at 50 years old. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>You can figure out get a younger man. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>Why breaking an old buck. The younger guy. <v Different Speaker>Where did you look? <v Unemployed Speaker 9>Oh employment agency and anybody that tell me bout it and go see about it. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>You watch the newspapers answered several ads.
<v Unemployed Speaker 9>They'd all say, well, don't call me, I'll call you so just as much as saying <v Unemployed Speaker 9>no. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>Went around, put my name in different places. But I didn't ever get a call in any place. <v Unemployed Speaker 9>[background TV noise] <v Speaker 10>Sometimes you do take something and it almost beyond would like. <v Speaker 10>I took a job in heating work, which I'd worked at before. <v Speaker 10>I had a lot of work to do in a row with a crew and had <v Speaker 10>to work 10, 11, 12 hours a day, and I at my age would <v Speaker 10>be alive. I don't feel at all that I'm going to work for hours a day. <v Speaker 10>I do. You can't take that kind, you come home so tired. <v Speaker 10>You can't even sit down, eat your supper. <v Speaker 10>What good is it? <v Speaker 10>And uh it couldn't, you know, afterwards, I quit, <v Speaker 10>couldn't take it. But live that way. <v Speaker 10>I'll quit. I'll sell my house, Im going on relief for work that way. <v Speaker 10>I want employment for a long time. <v Speaker 10>It went up to the hearing, I showed.
<v Speaker 10>He showed a half hour late. <v Speaker 10>I won. I got some of it back. <v Employment Worker>We have had uh cases where an employee has tried another job <v Employment Worker>and has worked more than 10 weeks at that job, <v Employment Worker>and having quit them was disqualified for having quit. <v Employment Worker>One of the provisions of our quitting law and <v Employment Worker>in an attempt to have employees try other work is that if he <v Employment Worker>tries a new job and quit that job within <v Employment Worker>the first 10 weeks of his work, and if we would have given him a good cause <v Employment Worker>for refusing it in the first instance. <v Employment Worker>Then he will not be suspended from his prior employers. <v Employment Worker>However, if he works over 10 weeks for a given employer, that particular provision can't <v Employment Worker>be used. <v Employment Worker>Other uh Gisholt employees have been suspended because <v Employment Worker>after having been unemployed for an extended period of time, they refused
<v Employment Worker>work that paid the going rate of pay for that kind of work <v Employment Worker>in this area, even though it paid less than the man was getting at <v Employment Worker>Gisholt. And when that does happen, we have suspended them for having <v Employment Worker>refused that job. <v Different Speaker>When I I went first went up, reported that I did quit. <v Different Speaker>Then, of course, they called him and he said, no, he didn't have a reason to quit. <v Different Speaker>He didn't tell them that he cut my wages a dollar an hour. <v Different Speaker>You didn't tell them you would work me twelve hours a day. <v Different Speaker>There's no law on this date that says a man can ask you to work 5 hours a day or pretend <v Different Speaker>you are working 12 hours a day? There's no law. <v Different Speaker>As in all legal proceedings where <v Different Speaker>one person says one thing and another person says another. <v Different Speaker>The person who has to make the decision, looks at <v Different Speaker>false statements and tries to decide which one is the correct one. <v Different Speaker>Someone along the line has to make that decision.
<v Different Speaker>The basis for unemployment compensation is that this is an employee law <v Different Speaker>and where the wait is equal, <v Different Speaker>we are to presume that the employee should be given the <v Different Speaker>benefit of the doubt. I don't know what case this is, but I <v Different Speaker>would have to believe that in talking with both the employer <v Different Speaker>and the employee, the person who made the decision felt that this <v Different Speaker>employer's uh statements were more accurate as to the working <v Different Speaker>conditions than employees. <v Unemployed Speaker 10>I didn't think when I was had to have a hearing and wait 4 months for. <v Unemployed Speaker 10>I don't know why did they decide to do it that way? <v Unemployed Speaker 10>I don't know. I don't think long if I had all this time coming from Gisholt. <v Unemployed Speaker 10>If I couldn't stand to work on a job I should had. <v Unemployed Speaker 10>They should have been no question about it. They should've just got my employment back. <v Unemployed Speaker 10>Same with other fellows who didn't even look for jobs.
<v Unemployed Speaker 10>They just took all the unemployment they had come in and they worry about a job when they <v Unemployed Speaker 10>run out of that. <v Host>Problems and reemployment can be compounded by some of the following situations or <v Host>variables. The length of stay a worker had with one company. <v Host>The nature of his skill, the kind of industrial community the worker lived in. <v Host>The nature of supply and demand at the time he was terminated, his age, his <v Host>mental and physical health, his education, his personality, the degree <v Host>of community attachment. <v Host>Some men looked elsewhere for jobs if they could afford to, but many returned to Madison. <v Host>A few considered temporary transfer to Gettings and Lewis. <v Host>But apparently most of the positions offered in Fond du Lac were for salaried workers, <v Host>not the hourly paid. Many refused to go on principle or because the work <v Host>was only for a few months. <v Host>There are obvious economic repercussions from termination and from unemployment, but <v Host>there are psychological consequences too that interact and affect one another. <v Host>Donald Tiffany, chief psychologist at the High Plains Comprehensive Health Center in
<v Host>Hays, Kansas, and author of The Unemployed. <v Donald Tiffany>When a person is terminated, there immediately is some concern <v Donald Tiffany>about his own identity. <v Donald Tiffany>Now, we have to think of that in terms of defining job as <v Donald Tiffany>something different than in defining work. <v Donald Tiffany>When we talk about work, we're usually talking <v Donald Tiffany>about the individual's ability to express himself in some graphic <v Donald Tiffany>way and perform in a way that fits with <v Donald Tiffany>his own personality structure and determination <v Donald Tiffany>means separating that individual from that kind of an expression <v Donald Tiffany>are that outlet, which in many instances is extremely <v Donald Tiffany>important to people. <v Donald Tiffany>Now, in the case of a termination from a job that is something consensually <v Donald Tiffany>validated by a group of others who say that certain
<v Donald Tiffany>operations should be performed here and it can be performed by anybody, regardless <v Donald Tiffany>of their own personality structure, own <v Donald Tiffany>identity, then if you lose a job like that, <v Donald Tiffany>for whatever reason, it's less traumatic. <v Donald Tiffany>It doesn't raise the conflicts that it does. <v Donald Tiffany>In the case of one who say, for instance, is an engineer identified <v Donald Tiffany>very closely with the operations of his job, only to find <v Donald Tiffany>that he must now reconstruct the new self-concept, <v Donald Tiffany>develop new relationships, and to alter <v Donald Tiffany>his own manner of looking <v Donald Tiffany>at the way he likes to express himself. <v Donald Tiffany>Such conflicts that the individual experiences in this <v Donald Tiffany>way are not limited to his own feelings about himself <v Donald Tiffany>and the degrading of himself.
<v Donald Tiffany>But it also has implications for his family, <v Donald Tiffany>for his relationship, specifically to his wife, and to past friends. <v Different Speaker>I'm not happy, she's unhappy, creates friction in the family. <v Different Speaker>Tempers are short. <v Different Speaker>I can see why. <v Different Speaker>Well, when you have bills, people come in the door, ask you for money. <v Different Speaker>It's a frustrating thing. <v Different Speaker>I can understand those statistics for low income families break up. <v Different Speaker>I can see why. If you don't adjust yourself to the situation. <v Donald Tiffany>Many of the times when somebody would ask him, say, who are you? <v Donald Tiffany>His definition of himself would be locked into many of the characteristics or <v Donald Tiffany>performances that he carries out within a given particular <v Donald Tiffany>job. <v Donald Tiffany>Now when someone comes along and says you can no longer do that. <v Donald Tiffany>That is an internal shakeup. <v Donald Tiffany>A great deal of frustration develops from that feelings
<v Donald Tiffany>of rage, feelings of anger, feelings of how do I strike back? <v Donald Tiffany>What can I do about this kind of a situation? <v Donald Tiffany>And it's a sense of lostness that that fate <v Donald Tiffany>and chance and any other external force <v Donald Tiffany>has more to do with the kind of direction you take in your own life <v Donald Tiffany>than any decisions or skills that you may have or possess. <v Donald Tiffany>The feeling is that there is something <v Donald Tiffany>wrong with me and it generally moves from a more positive <v Donald Tiffany>to a more negative attitude about himself. <v Donald Tiffany>This limits his ability to approach others in <v Donald Tiffany>the sense of looking for jobs. <v Donald Tiffany>And it ends up with an increase of time off <v Donald Tiffany>or an increased period between jobs as a function <v Donald Tiffany>of termination, because one doesn't quite know how to go about
<v Donald Tiffany>reestablishing himself and what direction he should take, whether <v Donald Tiffany>he should move to a lower level of job skill <v Donald Tiffany>and less pay because of the new self-conception that he has, or should <v Donald Tiffany>he try to go hire train himself better or what? <v Donald Tiffany>That's not clear to him. <v Host>On the average, it took most of the men I met 6 months to a year and a half to find work. <v Host>Many of them tried several jobs during that time. <v Host>Almost all the men complained about dejection and feelings of rejection. <v Host>Some mentioned loss of pride and self-esteem, a sense of not being useful, of <v Host>being inactive and unproductive. <v Host>Some workers felt they had been exploited or discriminated against. <v Host>For many workers, readjustment was difficult. <v Host>Although this was true for older workers, it could also hold true for younger workers, <v Host>especially if they had had a history of unsuccessful jobs before going to Gisholt. <v Host>Salaried workers, as well as the hourly paid, had problems finding <v Host>work in their field or changing careers in midstream.
<v Host>Some men returned to part time farming or opened their own business. <v Host>Some used much of their savings. <v Host>Roughly a dozen went on welfare. After 2 years, some men were and are <v Host>still unemployed. Some men expected no assistance in finding new employment, <v Host>and when they succeeded, they were glad they had obtained jobs on their own without help. <v Host>But many men felt the transition they had to make was not ameliorated by government <v Host>agencies and should have been. <v Host>Are their criticisms legitimate or the product of bitterness which resulted from their <v Host>termination? In 2 weeks, Unemployment 3 manpower and related <v Host>services. The community's resources for the unemployed. <v Host>Next week's program Unemployment to Self-Help. <v Host>Does It Work? Considers job counseling services at the Gisholt Self-Help Organization. <v Host>Gisholt Death of a Factory is a series of programs produced at the University of <v Host>Wisconsin Extension Radio Center. <v Host>This is Ronnie Hess. <v Different Speaker>I can understand why there isn't any jobs around. <v Different Speaker>Even in a big city like Madison, compression or recession or whatever they call
<v Different Speaker>it? When is it going to end? It sure is getting discouraging.
Series
Gisholt: Death of a Factory
Episode Number
No. 8
Episode
Unemployment, Part 1. Get a Job
Producing Organization
Wisconsin Public Radio
WHA (Radio station : Madison, Wis.)
Contributing Organization
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip-526-z31ng4j24s
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip-526-z31ng4j24s).
Description
Episode Description
In this episode of the series, led by host Ronnie Hess, many different viewpoints of unemployment were shared, especially the worker's point of view. Each speaker shared their own experiences with unemployment, how they dealt with it, and the repercussions of it. This episode also described the process of filing unemployment with the Wisconsin State Employment Service. Additionally, professionals in the field, Professor Gerald Summers from the University of Wisconsin and Donald Tiffany, chief psychologist, explained the effects of unemployment.
Series Description
"When a major company in a community closes down, what questions are raised? GISHOLT: DEATH OF A FACTORY is a series of programs on termination and unemployment.
Broadcast Date
1973
Created Date
1973
Asset type
Episode
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:30:17.904
Embed Code
Copy and paste this HTML to include AAPB content on your blog or webpage.
Credits
Producing Organization: Wisconsin Public Radio
Producing Organization: WHA (Radio station : Madison, Wis.)
AAPB Contributor Holdings
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia
Identifier: cpb-aacip-e4da4f7c780 (Filename)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Gisholt: Death of a Factory; No. 8; Unemployment, Part 1. Get a Job,” 1973, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-z31ng4j24s.
MLA: “Gisholt: Death of a Factory; No. 8; Unemployment, Part 1. Get a Job.” 1973. The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-z31ng4j24s>.
APA: Gisholt: Death of a Factory; No. 8; Unemployment, Part 1. Get a Job. Boston, MA: The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-z31ng4j24s