Posted on: Sunday, September 8, 2002

ONE YEAR, ONE NATION
Dramatic job losses have shaken workers' sense of security

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Aviation instructor Chuck McCall teaches Ale Porteous at Honolulu Community College. Porteous began pursuing his commercial pilot's license when he was dealt a pink slip in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

Ale Porteous was laid off from his flight attendant job at Hawaiian Airlines last October — just one of thousands of people throughout the Islands who found themselves suddenly out of work after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Following the crowd of people in line at the unemployment office downtown, Porteous bumped into a counselor who referred him to a college and job fair. And that's when the 23-year-old Porteous stumbled upon the path to his dream of flying commercial airplanes.

He has been rehired full time as a Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant, but Porteous still is logging the necessary hours at Honolulu Community College's aviation program in pursuit of his commercial pilot's license.

"I didn't know what to do when I was laid off," Porteous said. "Actually, everything's turned out wonderfully. I always wanted to be a pilot. I just never knew how."

His is one of the happier stories to emerge from the post-Sept. 11 unemployment calamity that hit Hawai'i's tourism, travel, restaurant and retail industries hardest. Overall, workers filed more than 50,000 unemployment claims by February 2002 — a rate never before seen in the Islands.

Since then, thousands of workers such as Porteous have regained their career footings or found different paths as companies have slowly rehired to meet Hawai'i's own gradual economic recovery. But for many, the attacks' effects have been more far-reaching than can simply be fixed by returning to the work force after the sudden, swift wrenching pain of getting a pink slip. One of the longest-lasting effects may be that the once-cherished notion of job security no longer exists.

Gina Kurzniec was among those laid off in those early days after the attacks, losing her job selling shoes at Nordstrom on Sept. 28 as tourism and consumer spending came to a virtual standstill.

Kurzniec still hasn't found work. Now the Kailua-born and raised 28-year-old is thinking of moving to Las Vegas where she hopes to find better job opportunities and cheaper housing.

For 39-year-old Terry Naope, it took only a month to find a new job after she was laid off in April as a manager for a Japanese restaurant that had become another victim of the lingering drop in Japanese tourists after Sept. 11.

But today Naope works at a McDonald's in Hawai'i Kai as just one of the crew. Twenty years before, as a Kaimuki High School graduate, Naope got her start in the restaurant business at the McDonald's near her house.

"Now it feels like I'm starting all over again," Naope said.

By the numbers, the state's unemployment picture looks good. The 4.5 percent unemployment rate for July was essentially the same as it was the month before — and even lower than the 4.7 percent the state saw the same month last year. Nationally, the unemployment rate for July was 6 percent.

The state's labor force of 575,200 employed workers in July, and 27,200 unemployed, represented the second consecutive month of expansion after six months of decline, according to the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Meanwhile, Manpower Inc. is projecting moderate good news for this fall, with 13 percent of Hawai'i businesses surveyed reporting they plan to expand their staff from October through December and only 3 percent saying they expect cutbacks.

But the big unknown is what happened to the people who were working two and three jobs and lost just one of them after Sept. 11. It's also unclear how many people left for the Mainland or the Neighbor Islands because they couldn't find hotel or restaurant work in Waikiki.

"That's probably a strong possibility, but we have no way of tracking that," said Tom Jackson, spokesman for the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. "I do know that I've gotten a lot of calls from people who were in the restaurant or services industry who went back to the Mainland to look for work until they could come back here."

And in the months since Sept. 11, the state's $10 billion tourism industry — employing more than a quarter of all workers in the Islands — has continued to struggle, exacerbating job-security fears among workers. Uncertainty also has become ingrained in dozens of other Hawai'i industries. Faced with mixed economic signals and global instability, many continue to hunker down, hiring as few people as possible.

Most forecasters say key signs are showing the Islands' economy has stabilized, with further slow growth likely for the remainder of this year. However, the economy is far from robust, and expectations are that without any major changes in the state of tourism, that gradual pace will continue for the rest of the year.

Even a catastrophic event like Sept. 11 wasn't enough to shake Hawai'i from its dependence on tourism for employment, said Leroy Laney, a Hawai'i Pacific University economics professor.

"If 9/11 didn't do it, then it's hard to think of something that would," Laney said. "It didn't cause us to invent some new industry here. Nothing like that has come to the fore. Even though we talk about diversification around here a lot, it doesn't come easily."

And so laid-off workers continue to adjust to the unfriendly job market that has become part of the Islands' current landscape.

Naope walks to work at McDonald's and takes TheBus anywhere else. Living with her parents "means that I'm able to work at McDonald's," she said. "I don't spend as much anymore. I know that I just have to stop spending. Mostly I'm just here to work and to do my job."

Kurzniec's unemployment benefits ran out at the beginning of August. Even when she received her unemployment checks, money was tight. She and her husband, Chad, were sometimes late with the rent for their Waikiki apartment.

Now they're not sure how they can survive on only Chad's paycheck as a waiter. So they're thinking of moving to Las Vegas, where they both hope to go back to school and find better-paying jobs.

"It seems like moving away, we'll find better opportunities," she said.

Porteous now only has the kind of problems that other laid-off workers would envy.

Going back to work for Hawaiian Airlines means he has to find time to fly and go to school. Juggling work with community college means delaying his commercial pilot's license another six months or so.

But that's OK with Porteous.

It's a big change from when he joined the program with no job, said Ralph Hiatt, Honolulu Community College's director of aviation.

"He was down," Hiatt said. "Now he's pretty lucky."