U for Unemployment

And a period of unstable employment

The capital projects team at Grimsby included a small team of draughtsmen who were not direct employees but engaged on contract from an agency. When I needed a job following the loss of my council seat, in May of 1989, I contacted the agency and was immediately assigned to the drawing office of another of the chemical plants that populated the South Bank of the Humber estuary. Within a few months I was hankering after something more challenging and, in March of 1990 I joined the staff of a company undertaking the overhaul of power stations across the region.

Geographically Cleethorpes is out on a limb. It made sense to find a home with easier access to the motorway network linking Yorkshire and the East Midlands. We found one in a small development in a village about 20 miles West of Hull and moved there in April 1991. Six months later I was called in to my boss's offices to be told that, because of the seasonality of the company's operations, it had been decided to reduce the permanent establishment and rely more on the recruitment of staff on a temporary basis each summer.

My fiftieth birthday was imminent. I was redundant and facing a period of unemployment with a newly acquired mortgage and a maxed out credit card.

The next four months were tough. Not as tough as the much longer periods of inactivity being experienced by many as the old industries of the region were being strangled. For me, having worked continuously since before my seventeenth birthday, rising through the ranks to a position of modest responsibility, it was devastating.

Looking back I wonder why I did not do more writing during this period. I can only suppose it was because my immediate priority was to get back onto the jobs market as quickly as possible. Of course, there was the financial imperative, but the last thing I needed was a long period without employment on my CV, especially as I already had a 30 month period in the recent past during which my activities could be seen by a potential employer as having limited value.

My hope was that the power station overhaul people would take me on in March. In fact, it was a client of theirs with whom I had worked who made contact, offering me a six month contract as part of a team updating their Engineering stores catalogue. The pay was poor in comparison to what I had earned in the past but it was better than nothing and there was still the possibility of being offered a better deal by my former employer. That is, in fact what happened: I completed 3 months of the cataloguing task, then worked on a power station overhaul project until the end of September.

I was also, throughout this period, registered with the agency and within days of the power station project ending I was contacted and asked to attend an interview with a small Engineering company who had, I was to learn, obtained a contract to install some new equipment for a pharmaceutical company at their plant next door to the one I had worked at between 1978 and '86.

For the duration of that contract I remained an agency worker but when it was completed I was offered a permanent post on the company's staff, with a pension and a car.

The situation remained precarious however. Competition was tough and too many of our bids for work were rejected. This time redundancy did not come as a complete surprise. All the signs were present through the summer of 1994. When the fateful decision came I was allowed to work out my notice. As the year came to an end I was unemployed on my birthday once again.

I sent my CV to a Sheffield based company and was granted an interview. The company's principals were two brothers. The one who interviewed me was ready to appoint me but said his brother would need to see me too. That was unlikely to happen until the new year. A few days later the brother rang me and said he was happy to employ me. He wanted me to start immediately after the Christmas/New Year break. In answer to my question he agreed that they would supply a car. I needed this in order to travel every day to Sheffield.

Within days it became apparent that although the company had an in-demand product they were experiencing serious cash flow problems. It was frustrating to discover that a system that was due to be installed next week had not begun because the materials were not available. Upon chasing the supplier I would be told to talk to our accounts department. The previous consignment had not yet been paid for. Or the installation team would arrive on site to find that the specialised equipment I'd hired was not there. Again, on contacting the plant hire company I'd be referred to accounts.

I'd been in the job less than two months when I arrived one Monday morning to be told that a crisis meeting had been held over the weekend and that it had been decided to reduce the payroll.

Fortunately this third period of unemployment did not last long. Within a month I received a call from the agency telling me the power station overhaul company were looking for someone to assume the role I had held previously. This time in Kent. After spending 8 months traveling from Yorkshire to Kent and back each weekend I wanted something nearer to home so asked the agent to look out for something. British Steel were about to embark on an interesting new project at their Scunthorpe facility. I went for an interview and was successful.

It was still only a short term contract, due to finish in around eighteen months. Towards the end of 1996 I attended a recruitment fair being staged by a major defence equipment manufacturer in Leeds. Subsequently I was invited to an assessment day at their East Yorkshire facility. The only thing preventing my immediate appointment, I was told, was security clearance. Eventually I was invited to commence my employment with them on a date that coincided with the end of the steelworks contract. This would become a final near decade of full time pensionable employment leading up to retirement in the autumn of 2006. At last the uncertainty of short term contracts and thankfully short periods of unemployment was over.

Two years after I retired I found myself working for a community development organisation running a project that employed long term unemployed people, working part-time, undertaking house maintenance and gardening for elderly people. I discovered that, contrary to the cynicism with which such schemes are often viewed - “their main purpose is to make the unemployment figures look good” - the workers' lives were given new meaning with something worthwhile to occupy their time and an opportunity to use their skills for the good of their community.

I’ll write more about that in next week’s post “V for Volunteering”.

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