Unemployment Emotional Distresses Which Arise

Unemployment

Emotional distresses which arise from loss of job usually have effect on the loser of the job and the rest of the family members. This analysis covers the issue of unemployment and assesses its effect on auto workers in Detroit and their families. It was found that financial hardship which comes as a result of unemployment directly affects the relationship of the family.

From the year 1979 to 1984, there has been loss of jobs to more than 11.5 million by workers as a result of plant closing within industries. Though manufacturing industries offers 20% of the employment in the nation, it has undergone tremendous cut down and closing, (Bluestone & Harrison, 1982). A number of issues that leads to plant closing has come up like, ill-founded federal policy, poor corporate planning, capital flight, pursuit of lower labor costs and decreasing profit rate. The effect of these on workers as well as their families tends to be severe.

The above situation is being experienced by Whelchel's family who are living on a side of street just near the automobile plant. This was after the shut down of Chevrolet plant in Atlanta due to strike and the Whelchel's family is trying to make end meet. Their house is brown framed with seven rooms-seven rooms. The lot is narrow though deep, stretching almost two hundred feet back which forms a pasture for the cow that is providing the family with milk. Houses that are around Whechel's are the same in size and style, all of them having frame structures, with grasses planted at the small front yards.

The jobs that Whelchel is doing is refinishing furniture for the Western Union Telegraph Company, being a shipping clerk and as well being a lineman for the Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company. Currently he is on the unloading platform of the Chevrolet Company whereas a month ago he was a buffer. On the unloading platform he works for forty hours a week making just eighty cents for an hour.

About 40% of the entire U.S. auto employment tends to be situated in Michigan. From 1980s recession in the auto industry, the economy of the Michigan has suffered considerably. Detroit area economy was largely hurt by decline in industries. Annual rates of employment in this area were as high as 16% in 1982, whereas in January 1988 the rate was still far above the national average of 5.8%-10.3% within Detroit.

Skills that are required in jobs as well as training like the ones needed within automotive industry are becoming scarce increasingly. Even though the service industry within the sector of the service industry goes on to enlarge in the 1980s and 1990s, most of the jobs which are available are paying low with low skill requirement as also realized from the work that Whechel is doing. Therefore, plant shutdown mean the worker will get lower pay (in any case work is found), quite long periods of unemployment, and at the end there is possibility of loss of benefits like unemployment compensation and health coverage.

Similarly, most of the studies have given their argument that marriage as well as family life tends to be negatively affected by the problem of unemployment, Dew, Bromer, & Shulberg, (1987). A section of the studies have connected unemployment to level of violence in the family. Some have given reports on increase in level of family argument, tension and friction to be happening because of the experience of unemployment, Hakim, (1982), Grayson, (1985). From many negative effects of parents' unemployment as well as associate financial distress, affects children as well.

From a designed prospective quasi-experimental panel survey in November 1986, when General Motors announced that it was going to close nine plants and part of two others, which was done using comparison of workers from four of the closing plants from twelve non-closing plants at three points, this was done three-month before the closing of the plant, a year after and two years after. It showed that financial hardship which is as a result of plant closing was the main factor in negative effect on family life, Broman, Hamilton, & Hoffman, (1990). Individuals who experienced loss of jobs were more likely to face financial hardship. It argued that financial hardship was the strongest intervening variable within the relationship between unemployment and family stress and conflict.

As financial hardship level rise, so does tension and conflict level rise between family members. In order for human services to alleviate the negative effects of unemployment they may be required to concentrate on maintenance of the income all through the period of unemployment. This problem of unemployment which results to stress and conflict in the family can also be minimized through ignoring unemployment compensation and concentrating on public works.

However, public works are not enough, since a new super highway within Oklahoma cannot provide work to the unemployed worker of the textile in Laurence; A new reclamation dam within Utah cannot assist unemployed auto worker in Detroit pay his landlord; the same way housing, schools and hospital cannot provide enough assistance to the right people within the right places at the right time. What is needed is the right kind of public works.

This problem can as well be helped through improving unemployment insurance system though depends on the state to take action. Within some states, the maximum benefit a worker is capable of getting is less than one third of the average wage in his state. The person who founded the program had an intention that a worker who is unemployed was suppose to draw a benefit that is equal to at least 50% of their own regular earnings.

Another approach to the solution to inadequacies of unemployment compensation can be recognizing of the need of Federal action, but it can also be modified to Federal payment for supplementing the ones provided by individual states, though it cannot be the final solution to the problem, it is just an immediate action to the problem.

Diversification can also be a solution to this problem. This has been sought by Detroit planners and they prefer to have 1000 firms employing 100 persons each in their diversification as compared to a single firm employing 100,000 workers. This may help reduce the loss of job by majority in case of closure of the firm.