What Comes After "Goodbye"?

Some made as much as $72,000 a year. Now, after being laid off by United Airlines in its desperate attempt to restructure, former workers at the company's state-of-the-art maintenance facility in Indianapolis (IN) are lucky to be getting $336 a week in unemployment benefits. When you look beyond the faceless numbers of workers declared no longer necessary by United and other airlines, this is what you see: Two thousand maintenance workers in Indianapolis alone, scrambling for any job they can find.

Mid-life Career Changes

Ken Grady, a 43-year old laid-off United worker, told the Indianoplis Star the he walked into the unemployment office and told his story. But when employees at the benefits office saw his pay stub, they "said I made too much money," Grady said. "I just laughed in their faces and walked out." Grady is now driving a bus and going to school to become a paramedic.

"There's some people who say, 'I need a job right now. I don't care what it is.'" said Michael Higgins, a manager at Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana, in an interview with The Star. "They'll go down to Home Depot."

Higgins' agency runs the Air Project, a federally-funded program aimed at helping laid-off airline workers get back into the workplace. Brian Connors, a laid-off mechanic, says the United job "the best I ever lost." Now, he's working on a tip he got from the Air Project about a career as a railroad conductor. It's a "good union job," he said.

But, after working for the airlines, the job market looks much, much tougher than it used to, says Connors. He tells the Star, laid-off United workers "have to let go of United Airlines and look at today's working environment. . . . People's expectations were just phenomenal. They thought they were going to walk into a job at $25 an hour or $35 an hour. I don't think there's going to be a lot of people doing that right now. A&P (airframe and powerplant) mechanics are not in demand. What's in demand are people willing to work and do their time and make the best of a situation."

The Promised Land No More

Many workers at United's Indianapolis base (right, which, along with a similar facility in Oakland, is now slated by the airline for closure) were lured there because of the relatively low cost of living and the laid-back lifestyle of the Midwest. "It was going to be the promised land," said Patricia Gibson, who was handed a pink slip by United. She tells The Star she's now thinking about work in the medical field.

"They had families. They bought these new homes. Now it's 'What do I do?' They trained for years," her husband, James, said. "They had families. They bought these new homes. Now it's 'What do I do?' They trained for years," Mr. Gibson told the newspaper.

While some of those laid off want to remain associated with aviation, others are throwing in the towel. "There's a lot of us who said we'll never touch another airplane as long as we live," Ken Grady told The Star. "United put such a sour taste in our mouth. We're done with it."

FMI: www.theairproject.com