Learning to survive job-loss shock
| • | Follow these four tips precisely if laid off |
| • | Be prepared for the pink-slip blues - and help your friends cope |
By Glenn Scott
Advertiser Staff Writer
As one of many Island residents confronting a job loss these days, Maureen Nakashima just wanted to feel good again.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
In her last days as a waitress and 15-year employee of the Hawaiian Waikiki Beach Hotel, she shared in the low spirits and resentment among more than 200 workers who had been told they would lose their jobs in an ownership change.
Maureen Nakashima holds baskets she uses in her pigeon business, White Doves of Ko‘olau. For the moment, she is offering to release the pigeons for free at wedding ceremonies to impress wedding coordinators.
"During those final two weeks, it was real tough," she said. "I was in deep depression. I'm 45 years old; where am I going to find another job?"
She found one in her own back yard. Relying on husband Dennis' collection of doves, she began a business releasing as many as a dozen white birds at the climax of a wedding. The business, White Doves of Ko'olau, hasn't exactly taken off yet. So far, most of Nakashima's releases are done for free to impress wedding coordinators. But she has accomplished her initial goals by leaving behind her depression for a new career built on lifting spirits.
"This is something I really believe in," she says. "And it's so nice to see people smile."
Nakashima's solution won't fly for everyone, but experts say her response to the embittering loss of a longtime job offers a healthy example for others confronting similar shocks as a recent set of corporate acquisitions and adjustments in Hawai'i have led to group layoffs.
Beverly Marica, franchise owner of the Honolulu office of Adecco Personnel Services, which helps people find work, said the hardest part of forced layoffs is the effect on people who have worked for a company for a long time. "And all of a sudden," she said, "they're cut out."
She predicts that the workers eventually will find jobs in the Islands, though they'll have to adjust to the lonely feeling of starting over, and possibly at a lower salary.
But job seekers have reason to feel confident, she said. Despite concerns about the U.S. and Japanese economies, Hawai'i businesses overall are well run and strong enough to absorb temporary disruptions and slowdowns. And unlike speculative pockets such as the Silicon Valley, the Island economy isn't reeling from overabundance.
"It's not like we've been flush over the last decade," she said. "We've seen this before."
She urges employees to stay current with job skills so a termination can seem as much an opportunity as a rejection. And, like Nakashima, be ready to try something new.
"There is no job security anymore," she says. "There is only individual security. Be prepared to have a skill set that's transferrable."
Corporate job cuts
Like it or not, several hundred O'ahu employees are putting a test to their skills as they confront the consequences of corporate job cuts.
An estimated 210 workers at Nakashima's hotel, now called the Aston Waikiki Beach, wound up jobless when Leucadia National Corp. took control of the hotel after a foreclosure of previous owner Otaka Inc. In addition, hundreds of employees of Liberty House are coping with cuts and transfers as new owner Macy's West adjusts positions in distribution and administration.
Sprint PCS announced recently that it will close the 64-employee call center in downtown Honolulu it acquired two years ago with the purchase of PrimeCo. Northwest Airlines announced last week that it would close its 50-employee reservations center and offer Mainland transfers to employees who prefer not to be laid off.
Voyager Submarines last month shut down its underwater sightseeing operation, affecting about 80 employees, and Trans Hawaiian Services and four subsidiaries halted transportation business a little more than a week ago, affecting an undisclosed number of employees.
In all cases, owners have said they would shift some effected employees into other positions or to affiliated companies.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Though these cuts draw attention, state officials who monitor the overall job outlook in Hawai'i say these recently announced cuts are likely to have only a slight effect on the relatively low 4.3 percent unemployment rate recorded in May. June figures will be released next week.
Recently laid-off hotel workers, from left, Kathleen Luka, Debbie Beyer, Laddar Mallare, Willie Kepa, Joseph Kaunamano Jr., Emi Tupino and Bill Udani produced their own leaflets protesting their unemployment, with the intent of distributing the material among visitors at Honolulu International Airport.
The trend in the state, in fact, has been toward a gradual creation of new jobs. In the first quarter this year, civilian jobs grew by 1.6 percent over the same period last year to 575,000, according to figures compiled by the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.
Still, that's little consolation for those caught in the cross-currents of business strategies, whether a foreclosure, an acquisition or a shutdown. As virtually everyone involved in the process volunteers, job cuts bring a sudden sense of loss.
Craig Robinson, a Honolulu psychologist, noted that people who lose jobs commonly go through a general pattern of grief, with mixtures of denial, depression and anger. Layoffs and terminations, he said, can affect lifestyles, self-esteem and ultimately personal relationships.
Citing Nakashima's case, he said people tend to work through their difficulties more quickly when they get busy changing their focus and their routines.
"Sitting home looking at the want ads is not a terribly effective coping strategy," he said.
Nakashima concedes she is lucky that her working husband can support her, and they already had, in almost 200 trained birds, a resource fit for her imagination. But she did a lot more than just unlock the coop.
Aside from picking up on-call waitressing work, she envisioned her own concept, buying two woven, heart-shaped baskets and decorating them with lace trim. A bird goes in each basket. The baskets go to the bride and groom, who release the doves right after the wedding kiss.
According to the business plan, $90 to $110 will go to Nakashima each time up to a dozen doves flutter away, the airborne antidote to her unhappiness after losing a job and a close-knit group of friends with whom she had worked for 15 years.
Her business represents an obvious risk and its own set of insecurities. "I was never a sales person before," she admits. But Robinson likes Nakashima's willingness to set out on her own initiative.
"That's probably the best you can do," the psychologist says. "Redirect your attention to some form of activity."
Continuing the fight
For many other former workers at the hotel, it hasn't been that easy. Many continue to fight, if not for their jobs then for the severance and vacation pay accrued during their years with previous owners. Some say they haven't recovered yet from the shock.
Several workers gathered on a recent Thursday at the Atkinson Drive headquarters of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 142, to prepare handouts for a march outside the hotel to keep pressure on new owner Leucadia.
Kathleen Luka, who worked 26 years at the hotel as waitress, cashier and reservations clerk, said she'd now prefer to find a job outside the industry.
"But I just don't know. I'm still in denial," she said. "On the last day of work, it was like you were walking around in a dream."
For Liberty House workers notified of terminations, the same kind of shock applies. One employee, who asked to remain anonymous pending hiring decisions, noted that worker confidence rose in February when the company emerged from years of bankruptcy proceedings.
The recent news that Macy's West would cut positions took them by painful surprise.
"Everyone is talking about it," said the worker. "The main focus is, "What are we going to do?' The morale is so down it's kind of spooky. There are a lot of angry people."
But there are things to do. The state Department of Labor, for instance, will schedule workshops on several topics, including job-training programs available for those interested in acquiring new skills.
Randy Morris, manager of Employment Specialists, offers that job candidates also need to look where jobs are growing — not at the corporate level but in the small- to mid-sized Island companies.
"That's who's doing the hiring," he said.
And, of course, they might try checking out their own back yards, like Maureen Nakashima.
"The transition I've made in just a few weeks is from just about as low as you can get to a real high," she says. "I just hope it lasts."
