New-Recording-9

During the 2008 recession, the speaker, a former tool and die maker for Chrysler, experienced fear and uncertainty when the plant closed. They decided to go back to school to become a therapist, which affected their family dynamic and required two incomes. The decision to leave their job was made together with their spouse and was supported by financial assistance due to job loss from NAFTA. They managed to stay afloat through a buyout and unemployment benefits, but had to make sacrifices in their lifestyle. The recession had long-term effects, providing job security but no pension. So, what were you feeling when you first realized that there was an economic crash? Fear that I wasn't quite sure how I was going to support my family when I found out that the plant was going to close, which is around the same time. I knew about a year in advance that it was going to close. What was your occupation during the recession? Well, before the recession, I was a tool and die maker for Chrysler. I guess during the recession, I went back to school to be a therapist, so that's what I've been doing ever since. What makes the 2008 recession stand out among the inflation that we deal with today? Well, for me personally, it stands out because it made a big change in my life and a change in career and it affected our family because my wife, Leanne, had to go back to work and go back to school and could no longer be a stay-at-home mom, so we needed two incomes to support our family. What do you remember from the day that you found out the branch was closing? That the plant was closing? I remember just feeling scared that we're not working, worried and not knowing what was going to happen or what they were going to do. We weren't sure if we could transfer to another plant or we would just lose our jobs or we would get a buyout and we weren't sure. I really didn't know what to do or what was going on. What key factors led you to make the decision to lose your job rather than work in Detroit? It was a decision that my wife, Leanne, and I made together. We prayed a lot about it and we just kept praying that God would show us what the right decision was. When we looked into going back to grad school, it just seemed that every single thing seemed to work out perfectly. I was able to get money to go back to school because some of the work from our plant went to NAFTA, I mean went to Mexico, and when NAFTA was enacted, there was a bunch of money to help people get retrained if they lost their job due to NAFTA. So I was able to go back to school basically for free for two years and then Leanne was able to go back to school and get help with grants and things that they had at the job center in Akron. We went down there so we were both able to go to school together and just have minimal amount of school loans that we had to take out. How did you manage to stay afloat being unemployed during the recession and what sacrifices did you have to make? Well we were pretty lucky in the sense that when I left Chrysler, I got a buyout, which was about a two year salary and it took me about two years to make it through school and do my internships and during that time I was also able to collect unemployment. So the biggest challenge was just a change in our lifestyle for the first five years or so of being counselors. We had to learn how to live on less money per year, so we just had to make sacrifices with vacations, with how new our cars were that we drove, how often we would go out to eat, how much we could spend on for Christmas and things like that. We just didn't want it to impact our children the least amount possible. Do you think that the recession has affected your life in the long term and if so, how? I mean now that I look back on it, it set me up moving forward to be a little bit more secure so like if the place I'm working at now, I lost my job, I could quickly go out and find another one because I have a clinical license that's highly valued. So that's a positive. I don't have to worry about losing my job, what would happen. The downside is because I'm no longer working in a union, I don't really have a pension anymore so I probably would have to work until I'm 70, where if I stayed working for Chrysler I could have retired at about probably 55.