Stress and Distress among the Unemployed: Hard Times and Vulnerable People

235 Pages·2001·4.66 MB·English

by  Clifford L. Broman

Stress and Distress
among the Unemployed
Hard Times and
Vulnerable People
PLENUM STUDIES IN WORK AND INDUSTRY
Series Edi tors:
Ivar Berg, University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia. Pennsylvania
and Arne L. Kalleberg, University of North Carolina. Chapel Hill. North Carolina
WORK AND INDUSTRY
Structures. Markets, and Processes
Arne L. Kalleberg and Ivar Berg
Current Volumes in the Series:
ANALYZING THE LABOR FORCE
Concepts, Measures, and Trends
Clifford C. Clogg, Scott R. Eliason, and Kevin T. Leicht
EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS IN FRANCE
Evolution and Innovation
Alan Jenkins
ENDING A CAREER IN THE AUTO INDUSTRY
"30 and Out"
Melissa A. Hardy, Lawrence Hazelrigg, and Jill Quadagno
NEGRO BUSINESS AND BUSINESS EDUCATION
Their Present and Prospective Development
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Introduction by John Sibley Butler
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Staffing Practices and Vacancy Chains
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The Case of a Survey Research Organization
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Edited by Ivar Berg and Arne L. Kalleberg
STRESS AND DISTRESS AMONG THE UNEMPLOYED
Hard Times and Vulnerable People
Clifford L. Broman, V. Lee Hamilton, and William S. Hoffman
A Chronological Listing of Volumes in this series appears at the back of this volume.
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Stress and Distress
among the Unemployed
Hard Times and
Vulnerable People
Clifford L. Broman
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
v.
Lee Hamilton
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
and
William S. Hoffman
International Union-UAW (Retired)
Detroit, Michigan
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloglng-in-PubHcation Data
Broman, Clifford L.
Stress and distress among the unemployed: hard times and vulnerable people/Clifford
L. Broman, V. Lee Hamilton, William S. Hoffman.
p. cm. - (Plenum studies in work and industry)
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 978-1-4613-6905-9 ISBN 978-1-4615-4241-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-4241-4
1. Unemployment-Psychological aspects. 2. Unemployed-Psychology. 3. Stress
(Psychology) 1. Hamilton, V. Lee. II. Hoffman, William Sydney, 1944- III. Title. IV.
Series.
H05708 .B76 2000
331.13'7'019-dc21
00-022847
ISBN 978-1-4613-6905-9
©2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Origina1ly published by Kluwer Academic 1 Plenum Publishers in 2001
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2001
AII rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without
written permission from the Publisher
To my family
Preface
The 1987 General Motors plant closings represented a major upheaval for
thousands of workers, for the union that represented those workers, and for the
communities they called home. This book tells the story of what happened to
workers affected by these plant closings. More generally, it deals with the stress of
job loss and with possible ways of coping with that stress.
We wish this book were out of date. We wish that the phenomenon of which
it speaks-plant closings and their human consequences-had ceased to be.
Instead, the book chronicles what was, at the time, the largest series of plant
closings by a single employer-General Motors' 1987 plant closings-but it does
so in the shadow of a much larger set of closings by that same employer that
occurred later. "Our" closings promised job losses of29,000, largely concentrated
in the rust belt of Michigan and its environs. The next round of closings period hit
many more GM workers nationwide in the 1992-1995 period. GM's original
announcement of the new closings in February of 1992 promised 21 plants would
be shut, 74,000 jobs eliminated, and the Board of Directors planned to eliminate a
total of 120,000 jobs during the 1990s. (Time, November 9, 1992, pp. 43-44).
Such events attract intense interest across the social sciences. A massive wave
of plant closings can attract the attention of economists, historians, sociologists,
psychologists, anthropologists, and political scientists. Therefore it is important at
the outset to make clear what our focus and our claims will be. We cannot grasp the
entire whole of plant closings and their economic, social, and political
consequences. Our study has a more micro-level focus. It looks at blue collar work
and union membership through the eyes of individual workers interviewed before
and after the plants closed in 1987. The goal is to paint a social psychology of the
despair ofj ob loss, workers' hopes for the future, and how workers tum despair into
hope.
Researchers have been examining the factors and forces which precipitate plant
closings for decades. The literal aging of a nation's industrial capacity obviously
vii
viii Preface
contributes to plant closings. But this is not the critical issue. Ifplants that get old
were simply closed and replaced, nearby, with a new plant there would be no cause
for concern among the workers or anybody else. But what is happening is that
plant~ome old, some middle-aged, some not-so-old-at-all-are being closed
and nothing is springing up in their place. How does this come to be? Among
the explanations scholars have come up with are such factors as labor costs,
avoidance of unions, capital flight to cheaper markets, foreign competition and the
like. In keeping with our desire to paint a social psychology oft he workers affected
by plant closings, we wondered what the workers' own theories were. How did they
come to terms with why their plants were closing? And what did they think would
come of it?
The question about "who or what is responsible for your job situation" was
answered, by most workers, as if the question had been, "Who caused the plant to
close?" The following seven statements illustrate how workers tended to
interweave thoughts about GM, general economic factors, and such particulars as
the role of government or of free trade agreements:
1. "General Motors wanted to close the plants because they can make a
better return on their investments outside the country."
2. "The sagging market for American cars is because of imports. The
other big reason was outsourcing for parts we used to make here."
3. "The government is letting jobs go out to the cheaper overseas markets
and they are shipping the jobs out of Michigan for cheaper labor."
4. "GM plans to be more competitive with the Japanese. To do this they
discontinue our jobs and outsource parts so they don't have to pay high
wages to union workers."
5. "It is Reagan's fault. He lifted the import restrictions and the imports
just came pouring in."
6. "They could have stayed in Michigan and condensed the plants in the
area. But, GM is looking for cheaper labor and places to operate that are
more economical for their profits. "
7. "GM wanted more profits-with no consideration for the working man.
They could make cars cheaper somewhere else so they shut down our
plant."
These were workers with first-hand experience inside the plants. They had
little or no exposure to the research literature about plant closings and job loss. The
language they use is simple and straightforward. Their attitudes are more visceral
than intellectualized. Yet their image of the subject matter was consonant with the
conclusions of many academic critics about what is producing the phenomenon we
call plant closings.
There is a common theme running through these opinions. Many workers seem
to see plant closings, free trade agreements, and outsourcing as a combined assault
on organized labor in the United States. They believe that the logic of profit
accumulation has led General Motors to use plant closings to try to break the back
Preface ix
of organized labor and to undercut the cost of a decent living for working men and
women. They see the movement toward a global economy as an attempt by auto
manufacturers to abandon a mature industrialized labor force (which costs them
more money) and to replace it with more docile workers from cheaper and
unorganized international markets.
Whether they are right or wrong is not the issue. This is what they saw, circa
1987, just before the plants shut down. This is the crisis-in the language of social
science, the "stressor"-with which they had to cope.
This book tells a story of losses. When workers' jobs are lost, or even
threatened, they pay an economic and emotional price. Their financial security is
shaken. Their home life is racked by strife between parent and child and between
partner and partner. And their peace of mind- their sense of balance between the
stresses of life and their ability to cope with those stresses-is disturbed.
This book also tells a story of strengths. We argue that it is part of the human
condition to be susceptible to distress-to depression and anxiety, despair and
fear-when objective circumstances are bad enough. We will seek both the causes
and the cures of these workers' woes in the economic and social cards life deals
them.
One message which emerges is that life is a stacked deck. Certain workers are
better prepared to cope with the financial troubles that accompany a plant closing
than others. Some have more money to start with, like high income workers. Some
have more of a chance to regain jobs, or feel they do, like better educated or high
seniority workers. Certain workers are likely to be facing more troubles in life
anyway-whether or not a plant closes. And if these workers just happen to find
themselves more often in an closing plant, life has just hit them with a double
Whammy. As later chapters will outline, some workers had it relatively easy or
brutally rough simply because of who they were, or who they were in combination
with where they were (in a closing plant, and then unemployed).
One of the things that gives people reason to believe is what they can see in
themselves: what resources they have, what drawbacks they will acknowledge,
what past they can draw on for comfort and what future they can envision for hope.
In later chapters, we also look into workers' thoughts and feelings about themselves
and their lives. Here we find certain psychological strengths, such as the ability to
cope with the situation in a way that offers hope and some semblance of a sense of
control over fate. Within limits, what people believe to be true shapes what is true.
Other reasons to believe come from the world around us, from our intimate and
not-so--intimate social ties. People don't solve the great crises of life alone, no
matter what their collection of badges of status and worth. Blue collar workers are
no exception. Workers have several traditional means ofc oping with tragedy. One
is religion, a cry for help directed upward. Another is loved ones and friends, the
sort of help that can be found around one's own back yard. Yet another is a labor
organization. Each of these means is in some sense collective, whether it refers to
the bonds of a religious community, the arms of those who care about us most, or
x Preface
the brother-and-sisterhood of those who share our way of making a living in this
world. Other ways of getting help such as seeing a mental health professional, in
contrast, focus on the individual who is in trouble. But when plants close down, the
trouble that ensues is collective trouble.
When a crisis strikes we need all the help we can get. Our concluding
arguments will focus on the necessity of combating the impact of plant closings
through multiple factors, but especially the collective forces our workers drew upon
for strength. When woes are spread across a plant, or a state, or a nation, many
forces come together to explain the resilience of those workers who survive the
crisis and the despair of the rest. What gives hope is an amalgam, a combination,
of reasons to believe in the self and the future. Much of the help is collective. It
is drawn from other people and groups rather than from some hardy self-reliant
psychological interior. Hope may spring eternal in the human breast, but other
people help to put it there and to nurture it. Help comes to workers from those they
love, from a God they worship actively, and from the union to which they belong.
In summary, this is a study of unemployment and mental health, but it is also
a study of coping and survival. Because as much as we want to know what happens
to people and their families when jobs are lost, we are also critically interested in
what they do to survive the hard times. We will see both in this book; who lost jobs
and why, how people tried to cope with the situation, and importantly, that the
resilience of the human spirit kept people going through the hard times. While this
is a book about loss, it is also a book about how people move on from loss. The
book is a tribute to the men and women ofthe UA W; we celebrate their resilience
and courage in the face of loss.
Funds for the research were provided by the Michigan Health Care Research
and Education Foundation, (now the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of
Michigan) and by the International Union-UAW . We are especially grateful to the
men and women oft he UA W, whose experiences and views form this investigation.
We also acknowledge the patience and encouragement of our families, for
putting up with us while we were writing this book. They, too, are a resilient bunch.
Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction: Stress and the Life Course during Hard times
Micro versus Macro Approaches........ ................................................ 3
Stress and Coping Models................ ................................................. 5
The Stress Process.... ....... ................................. ...................... ..... 5
Events versus Processes.................................. ................................. 12
Unemployment as a Stressor ............................................................. 13
Consequences of the Stress Process ........................................... 14
Overview of the Book ....................................................................... 16
Chapter 2
The Study: Sites, Sample, Method, and Measures.............................. 19
The Sites ........................................................................................... 19
The Closing Plants........................................... .......................... 19
The Historical Context...................................................................... 21
Studying the Effects of Plant Closings ............................................. 21
Designing the Research Project......................... ......................... 22
The Samples. .................................................................... ......... 23
Interviewing and Response Rates .............................................. 25
Nonresponse .............................................................................. 27
The Survey Questions............................................. ................ .......... 29
Wave I ...................................................................................... 29
Second and Third Wave Questionnaires .................................... 30
Measures ............. ...................................... ...... .......................... 31
Supplementing the Panel Study ................................................. 38
Overview .......................................................................................... 38
xi