The Storm Next Time

It’s different now. They don’t stand in line anymore looking for jobs. Instead, they sit at computers, logging on to programs that offer possibilities of work.

It’s not even called the unemployment office anymore. Now it’s the Employment Development Department, and has been for quite some time. But it’s the same old game--people out of work. And the faces of despair rarely differ.

There’s a kind of vacancy to hopelessness that sees nothing beyond that moment, a fear that there may not be anything beyond that moment. And the moment is a defining one, a final admission that you can’t make it on your own. You need help.

I went to three employment offices in L.A. on a day between storms. What prompted the visits were the increasing numbers of layoffs and shutdowns in the news. I wondered about the people involved in what seems to be an unnerving trend. Wards is laying off 28,000, Chrysler 26,000, Lucent 16,000, Sara Lee 7,000, J.C. Penney 5,300.

Those are just a few of the big ones. Who knows how many smaller companies are going down without a sound, casting their workers to the winds? “I’m worried,” one man told me, sitting at a computer in an EDD office. So am I.

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All of the offices have computers now and assistants to help those who aren’t computer smart. You can log on to a program called Caljobs to see if there’s anything out there to restore a sense of pride and usefulness.

Daniel Arellano was looking for both. A handsome, articulate man of 38, he was at the computer in the downtown center, searching the endless lists for something he could do.

Arellano was laid off after 10 years when the food company he was working for decided it didn’t need him anymore. A robot was taking his place. Three others were laid off the same day, and more layoffs were due.

“It was a cold way they did it,” Arellano said. “It was just, ‘That’s it.’ When I said, ‘What’ll I do?’ the plant supervisor shrugged and said, ‘Apply for unemployment.’ Then he walked away.”

Arellano has a wife and three children, ages 8 to 17. The layoff came as a shock. “I feel so down,” he said, shaking his head as though to rid himself of the melancholy. “It’s hard to find a job when you’re so low.”

The Crenshaw office was no different. Men and women--black, white and Latino--sat at computers, stood at windows or waited in rows of chairs in a muted environment. People in despair don’t make a lot of noise. Those who did talk spoke in hushed tones, as if they were in a church or maybe a mortuary.

Sylvia Dixon waited for a computer at the Crenshaw office. At 43, a single mother with four children, she’s trying to start over after doing time in prison for stealing.

“I’ll take anything,” she said, meaning it. “You name it. Clerical, secretarial, filing. I’m a good reader, and I can use a computer. But you know, it’s not easy when you’re an ex-convict. They just don’t want to hire you.”

A man laid off in a downsizing held a baby as he worked the computer with one hand. He didn’t even look up when he said, “No prospects.”

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Richard Housel, 53, was “let go” with 15 others when business began dropping at a satellite-

systems company. A big, good-natured man, he couldn’t mask the desperation as he searched online in the Woodland Hills office.

“I’ve been looking for permanent work since ‘92,” he said with a shrug that indicated failure. “I was in the aerospace industry, and when that went, that was it.” His latest job lasted seven months.

Housel, like others I spoke with, fears what might lie ahead. “Every day you read about layoffs, and it’s not just in California, but all over the country. My wife has a little jewelry business, and I thank God for that. But if times really get bad, who’s going to be buying jewelry? You can’t help but be a little afraid.”

Experts talk in terms of stresses building in the economy and an end to a national buying spree. They talk of mergers and the fading dot-com dream. They talk of bulls and bears and economic curves. They talk of fluctuations in the job market.

But what it all boils down to is a guy getting a notice that he’s out of a job, a woman trying to start over, a man with no prospects and a worker looking for something lasting.

There’s a foreboding out there, like the air before a storm, when the world waits. A lot of workers are waiting too, wondering if the next storm will engulf them.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.