Forced Down or Out in Grand Rapids In Manufacturing-Heavy Region, Economy Is Disrupting Thousands of Careers
By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 28, 2003; Page E01 GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- For many people these days, keeping a job has been a lesson in downward mobility. Bill Van Luyn had worked for Steelcase Inc., the world's largest business furniture maker, for 26 years, scrambling up the company ladder from summer substitute laborer to machine operator, to shop floor supervisor and finally to the white-collar stability of new-product development. When the business furniture industry began its devastating slide 21/2 years ago, Van Luyn held his breath as five rounds of layoffs passed him by. Then, this past October, he was offered a choice: Leave now, with six months' severance pay, or go back to the assembly line making file cabinets on the dusk-to-dawn shift for a salary 30 percent below his white-collar pay. Lean and fit at 6-foot-4 and 180 pounds, a swimmer by hobby and risk averse by nature, Van Luyn figured he could handle the work. But at 51, he proved himself wrong. Tendinitis in both elbows quickly set in. Then tendons locked in his thumbs, a hazard of the trade known as trigger finger. Now, Van Luyn is on workers' compensation, waiting to heal from his recent right-hand surgery and preparing for July 11, when his left thumb goes under the knife. Van Luyn's occupational fall may seem extreme, but workers here and across the country are making similar compromises to avoid joining the unemployed. The stubborn 7.3 percent unemployment rate around Grand Rapids is itself a shock for an area accustomed to the success that residents figure comes naturally from hard work and a conservative lifestyle. But unemployment rates understate the tumult and tragedies of a labor market that has forced workers to give up hours and overtime, lose pensions and health benefits, and trade down stable, well-paid jobs for uncertain, increasingly lower-paid ones. It is difficult to track such turmoil in statistics, but labor economists point to one number watched by the federal government to illustrate what they call "underemployment." Between the trough of July 2000 and this May, the last month for which statistics are available, the number of workers who say they have unwillingly taken part-time jobs because of slack work conditions or because no full-time work was available has risen nearly 47 percent, to 4.6 million from 3.1 million. Among them are people like Amber Hester, 48, who lost a job with a furniture maker in 2001, was hired in 2002 to make tracks for car seats, and was laid off again in February. Now she boxes Amway orders on the swing shift for a temporary agency paying her little more than half her original salary with no benefits. "You kind of get used to it," Hester said Tuesday evening as she prepared to go to work. "You do what you have to do these days. What else can you do?" Then there's Van Luyn's brother Dick, who has seen his 55- to 60-hour workweek and $60,000-a-year salary at Steelcase shaved to 32 hours and $38,000. But the house and boat on a lake still take money, so Dick Van Luyn leaves Steelcase in the evening for a cleaning-service job on the night shift. Even many full-time workers consider themselves employed beneath their worth or dignity. At 57, Nancy Miller lost her $15.13-an-hour engine parts job at W.A. Thomas Hy-Lift last year when the plant was shuttered without warning. But Miller quickly took a far tougher, manual labor position at Supreme Machined Products Co. in nearby Spring Lake for $9 an hour, with no pension benefits. Money was not all she had to sacrifice. She recently lost the tip of an index finger under the crush of a metal press. "We've gotten knocked down so many times," sighed Miller over coffee at Carmen's, a diner in Muskegon's down-on-its-heels downtown. "Most of us can bounce back up, but it's a tough world out there." By the standards of past recessions, even by the standards of the nation's hardest-pressed areas today, the labor market in the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland triangle does not appear that bad. But joblessness here is higher than the national 6.1 percent rate. Since the beginning of 2001, the area's once thriving office furniture business has shed nearly 5,000 jobs -- 44 percent of the industry's local work force -- while the region's small tool-and-die makers have continued their long slide toward oblivion. Jobs in durable-goods manufacturing in the region have plunged nearly 29 percent in the same period, to 95,500 in March, from 135,100. "As far as Grand Rapids is concerned, an unemployment rate of 6 or 7 percent is just terrible," said Joseph Ross, a workforce analyst for temporary-employment giant Manpower who focuses on West Michigan. "For the people of Grand Rapids, they just have never experienced anything like this." Here, as across the nation, the job malaise is affecting white-collar workers and blue-collar union members and management. The economic downturn was led by a sharp decline in business investment following the boom of the 1990s, exacerbated by the implosion of the dot-com and telecom sectors and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. If tight-fisted firms are reluctant to purchase high-end office furniture, they certainly will not pay full freight for Aeron chairs made by Grand Rapids-based Herman Miller Inc. when dot-com creditors are dumping them at fire-sale prices, Ross noted. Productivity gains during the downturn have enabled companies like Steelcase to do more with fewer workers, said Steelcase Chief Financial Officer Jim Keane. The unemployment rate has been held down in part by an influx of older women into the service workforce, said Jenny Shangraw, information resource manager at Grand Rapids' economic development agency. That has made it that much more difficult for young people trying to break into the job market. Kevin MacDonald, 23, proudly claimed his degree in aviation science and administration from Western Michigan University in December, but the closest he's come to a job in his chosen field is behind the counter at Enterprise Car Rental in Grand Rapids' Gerald R. Ford International Airport. "I call it my adapt-and-overcome policy," he shrugged. "You just have to go with it." And economic recovery has been hampered by businesses' reluctance to hire. Despite what he called "a gradual but noticeable increase in demand," Keane refused to say when Grand Rapids' largest employer would start adding workers again. "We're going to be cautious about how we run our business," he said. In all of those factors, Grand Rapids is tracking the nation as a whole, say labor economists. The recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s disproportionately struck workers without high school and college degrees, said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. During the recession of 1980-1983, employment fell by 5.6 percent for high school dropouts and 3.9 percent for those who never attended college, compared with 2.4 percent for workers with some college education. In contrast, since mid-2000, unemployment has risen by 2.3 percent for high school dropouts, 1.8 percent for high school graduates, 2 percent for workers with some college education -- "an egalitarian recession," Mishel said. As in Grand Rapids, the nation has seen a steady influx of older women into the work force, 849,000 in all since May 2002, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In contrast, the number of workers between ages 16 and 24 has fallen by 454,000 over the same period. Ross said the problem of underemployment is bound to be temporary. Many out-of-work or underemployed white-collar managers will network themselves back to work or simply leave the area if positions don't open soon, he said. Steelcase's Keane insisted that the end of the Iraq war has already led to signs of a turnaround. The increases in orders the firm is now seeing should lead to ramped-up production in six to eight weeks, he said. But for many area workers, optimism seems to be at a premium right now. Furniture makers foresaw an uptick last year as well. "There's two arenas here, the reality one and the 'I hope' one," Bill Van Luyn said wearily about his future. "I would hope within 24 months, Steelcase would see a recovery and I'll be back in the new product development arena. In reality, I don't see the sunny side of the egg."
