About the Book
While on vacation in the Pennsylvania mountains with his wife and three-year-old son, Matthew Newton received a voice mail from his employer: “Please call back as soon as you can.” When Matthew returned the call he learned that he no longer had a job. And by the time he hung up, a new reality had emerged: Life without work. As Matthew fretted about survival and the next best steps for his family, he also discovered that he didn’t miss the job that he just lost. In fact, the news of his layoff was accompanied by an overwhelming sense of relief. As the months of unemployment wore on, however, Matthew also learned that it’s difficult to build a better future while dwelling on the misfortune of the past.
Death of a Good Job Redux
This photograph by Anthony Suau, in part, inspired the title of my e-book, Death of a Good Job: A Memoir of the Great Recession. The photo was taken in January of 2010 outside of Cobo Center in Detroit, where the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) is held each year. When I first saw it, Suau’s photograph had particular resonance for me. Having worked as an automotive journalist for five years, I knew the NAIAS well, and had made the trip to Detroit on several occasions during my time on that beat. That also meant I knew the industry well enough, and understood the plight that it faced as the stock market crashed in late 2008, to understand that many workers’ lives would be upended in the months following the crash. Naively, I didn’t think my job would be one of them.
When I lost my job in June of 2009, it was a direct result of the ripple effect caused by the automotive industry’s near-death experience. That was before bailout money and court-supervised bankruptcies bolstered automakers like General Motors and Chrysler. The nonprofit where I worked reported on the automotive industry in its publications, and relied on ad revenue from and partnerships with such companies as General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota all the way down the supply chain to parts manufacturers such as Hella, Delphi, AutoDesk, 3M, and others. When hard times strike, as many know, the first cuts that large companies make are to expenses. In my industry, publishing, advertising budgets are often the first to go, followed by other expenses that all companies deem disposable. Namely, people.
In an essay from 2010 that accompanied Suau’s photographs, Alan Chin and Michael Shaw break down the story behind this specific photograph:
Outside the hall, Chrysler workers picket the auto show with mock coffins painted with “DEATH OF A GOOD JOB.” They were laid off after the Fiat merger that attempts to save Chrysler, but it did not save their jobs.
These men are not directly protesting their own deaths or their livelihoods, but that of the “good job,” and the industry itself. Union workers built America, and now hold a haunting, nostalgic vigil in memory of the value of labor and the nature of property. People are mourning.
Source: Reading the Pictures
Striking auto worker outside Cobo Hall in Detroit. Photograph by Anthony Suau
GalleyCat
“The best advice I received was also probably the most annoying: Don’t take it personal. For me, that was impossible. Not only because the experience was so fresh in those first weeks, but because I had no job, no money, and a family to take care of. So at first, all I did was take it personal. Because, no matter what friends and family tell you, there’s a definitively personal element to every layoff. That way of thinking, however, was toxic and did nothing but make a bad experience worse. It’s hard to have perspective though when everything feels like it is falling apart.”
—Excerpt from an interview for AdWeek’s GalleyCat site
Book Excerpt
It turned out 30 employees were let go that day. Back in March, 30 others were let go. And before that, 25 were laid off. “All difficult but necessary actions” we were told in a group staff meeting following the first cuts. Then the company stopped convening staff meetings to talk about its problems. With its fate so intertwined with that of an automotive industry in utter turmoil, everyone feared their jobs would be next. And as the company thinned out, clusters of workers were seen crying or whispering to one another about all the changes. I would hear about certain people who were let go, people I knew. But I never recognized all the names. After awhile though, I stopped seeing certain familiar faces in the halls and realized there were many people I would not see again. And now I was one of them, reduced to another name whispered among co-workers.
When I woke that morning, it felt like I never slept. The alarm clock on my nightstand began chirping at 6 a.m. I silenced it with a smack from my hand before slowly getting out of bed. Dull gray Pittsburgh sunlight broke through the wooden shutters in my bedroom. Exhausted from the nonstop rush of adrenaline the last day, my bones and muscles ached. My spine and shoulders were tight again. All the good of my family’s mountain escape erased with a single phone call.
—Full excerpt available at American Circus.