Another Labor Day,
Another year without a job;
This is a future I never imagined.
I imagined Work- hard work, maybe, until I died…
A genteel poverty of the aging adjunct or the single human services professional, perhaps,
but not unemployment, early retirement, and small fixed income (for decades?).
How did I get here? Well, I tried not to be here.
I followed conventional wisdom- That is:
- I became flexible and open to change.
- I retrained from low paid clerk to high paid factory worker and again to college graduate.
- I moved for available jobs.
- I found a niche- in my case- old fashioned social work: advocacy, education, service, and empowerment.
- I stayed up to date in my field.
I did not foresee the depth of public budgets cuts and medical reorganizations that would make my experience and my point of view irrelevant as those jobs disappeared, irrelevant despite retraining, working and continuing education.
Another Labor Day,
Another unnecessary worker death, a young woman working 4 jobs to make ends meet. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/28/maria-fernandes_n_5732230.html?cps=gravity)
30 years ago, I considered moving to Hawaii for friendship, but my friends were working 2,3 and 4 jobs to afford rent. I did not foresee that would be the way of life for the whole mainland a few decades later. Wisely, I thought, I returned to my factory job and wisely. I thought, I quit the factory job to retrain months before the plant was shuttered, back on Another Labor Day,
Violets in the Grass 