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Help Wanted: Getting Layoff News

When Erik Gerard's boss at Kaiser Permanente scheduled him for a meeting with a vice president and the human resources manager, he wasn't immediately concerned. As a senior manager himself, he'd been through these meetings before.

GERRARD: It could have been about another manager, it could have been about me, it could have been about a reorganization of the division.

So his anxiety level wasn’t particularly elevated…until the morning of the meeting when he picked up his mail.

GERARD: I wound up getting a note in the mail indicating that my health benefits and other benefits would cease and desist in 7 days.

That's right. The company messed up and broke the news that he was losing his job with an impersonal letter. It was three hours later that he had that meeting with HR and the vice president.

GERARD: …to give me the bad news, but by then I simply obviously had it in front of me.

His feelings after the layoff pretty well sum up the mix of emotions many feel when they lose their jobs.

GERRARD: Frustration, relief, anger.

A botched job of giving workers news of their pending unemployment is not nearly as rare as we would all hope. At Viking Worthington Steel in Valley City, Mario Coccia and his blue collar colleagues also stumbled onto their fate.

COCCIA: One of the employees found our equipment for sale on the internet.

After being confronted with the fact that their tools were for sale, the next day the company issued a memo saying the plant was going to close.

COCCIA: People felt betrayed, angry. Myself included, obviously. Most of the people there had 20-something years in there. I myself had 29 years of seniority and I just felt, that's not how you treat people.

Within 7 weeks of the internet ad, the owners closed the plant's doors. Coccia has a wife and three children. They had to figure out how they're going to live their lives going forward. His wife had been a stay at home mom. Now she's looking for work as a nurse's assistant. He's getting new training in automated machining.

COCCIA: I'm 52 years old and it's a challenge. It's challenging to go out and learn.

There's a lot of churning going on in Michelle Maloney's life too. Her mornings used to sound like this.

(sound of radio show)

Then, her job as the morning show co-host on country music station WGAR came to an abrupt end. There had been rumors for about a week that a massive layoff was in the works.

MALONEY: We were walking down the hallway for our weekly meeting, the general manager pulled me aside and said, 'can you come into my office?,' and I looked at him and said, 'this doesn't bode well,' and he said, 'I wish I could tell you differently.'

The rest was by the book. Human resources manager there. Paperwork. And some nice words about how the layoff had nothing to do with Michelle, and everything to do with the economy. She thinks her employer, Clear Channel, chose Inauguration Day in January to minimize the news coverage of the cuts.

MALONEY: And the human resources manager-she was really sweet-she was getting teared up. And, I said, I'm going to be ok, I feel bad for you. You have to stay here the rest of the day and do this how many more times? I'm sorry for you. I get to go home. You don't.

Since the layoff, Maloney has been networking and sending out 2 or 3 resumes a day to anything open around the country. She's trying to stay positive.

MALONEY: Good days and bad days. I'll be honest. There were days toward the beginning that I really didn't want to get out of bed. If it weren't for my dogs, I might not have. But I have to remember the good things I have, like my family and friends. And if not for them, I don't know how I'd get through this.

In the weeks and months ahead, 90.3 and the Plain Dealer will be monitoring Maloney’s journey and that of 87 more of the unemployed in our region. Stay tuned.

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