Layoff just bump in road for some

By Melissa Westphal

BusinessRockford.com

A job at Chrysler meant a good paycheck for Chris Johnson.

Sure, the work was temporary, but he hoped it would translate into a full-time position.
Instead, he was one of nearly 1,100 people laid off when Chrysler eliminated the third shift at its Belvidere assembly plant last week.

Johnson, 29, interviewed at Chrysler in May 2006 and was hired by summer. Before that, he had been living in Jacksonville, Fla., for about a year.

Before that, he was on tour for 4½ years, playing drums for the band Amazing Transparent Man. He returned to Rockford, where he was born and raised, to find work and because most of his family and friends lived here.

“I put in applications at a bunch of places, but there was nothing else, living in Rockford, where somebody was going to pay you that much money to do very little work,” he said.

He started working second shift in the trim department, doing small tasks, and would move to different departments when needed. Johnson knew his position was temporary — his contract said he could be working there for up to two years — but he hoped to get hired full time.

“For the last year, there’s always been rumors going around like, ‘Hey, we think the third shift might get laid off or they’re going to start cutting jobs.’ There was always speculation as to when it was going to happen. It was just a matter of knowing when the exact date was going to be.

“I just really didn’t let it bother me. A lot of people would get stressed out about it. But I’ve always been kind of a ‘whatever happens, happens’ person. It’s not the end of the world. There will always be other opportunities. This just happened to be good money.”

Johnson said he and his co-workers watched as temporary enhanced employees got hired on during contract talks at General Motors, so they had hope for the same at Chrysler. But when talks started, they knew their fate wasn’t the same.

“Going (to the plant), every day is a different rumor,” Johnson said last week. “Until it’s on paper or I hear it from management, I’m not really going to believe anything anyone says.”

The mood at the plant for the past few weeks was a combination of frustration and anger.

“People will show up at lunchtime, and a lot of people are calling in just because they stopped caring, basically,” he said. “They just were like, ‘You know what? We’re getting laid off next week and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ They just stopped being concerned about attendance records.”

He has a few leads on jobs but thinks it will be difficult to search after the layoffs because so many people will be looking. And leads other co-workers have found through job fairs and job-assistance programs can’t match the salaries at Chrysler.

“They’re being told, ‘We have jobs that are $8 an hour,’ when you’re coming out of a job that pays $22 an hour. I mean, why even bother? It’s not even in the same league.”
Johnson is single and is providing only for himself, so he’s not in a financial crunch that requires him to find a job immediately so he can pay his bills next month.

He said he still would have taken the job knowing that his short time there was full of uncertainty.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” he said. “I’m sure after I wake up on Monday and I think, ‘Oh, I don’t have to go to work today because I don’t have a job,’ then it’ll start to settle in. After about three days of doing nothing, I’ll start going stir-crazy and have to find something to do.

“I’ve thought about doing construction. It’s not even a matter of putting an application in because there are going to be so many people doing that. You basically are going to have to know somebody who can say, ‘Yes, I can get you a job.’ Or move to Guam. I’m not sure yet.”

Staff writer Melissa Westphal can be reached at 815-987-1341 or mwestpha@rrstar.com.