Since his factory job of nearly 20 years vanished, Lonnie Rucker has been scraping by, just caring for his family of four.
His philosophy for surviving is this:
”You need your light, and you need your heat, and you need your place to stay. Everything else has to be secondary or eliminated.”
So he makes do with $270-a-week in unemployment benefits, the maximum in Illinois for someone with one or more dependents. Rucker has no choice. It is his sole source of support.
As one of the 8.5 million unemployed workers-461,000 in Illinois-his advice is that unemployment insurance, born 56 years ago in the Depression, is a very short rope for survival . . . and little else.
It has not kept up with inflation, nor the new realities of Recession
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Rucker`s story is timely for the 1.1 million workers in the U.S. whose benefits ran out, and who, after weeks of political haggling in Washington, soon will be eligible for up to 20 more weeks in some states. In Illinois, where the extra checks will start going out Monday, the benefits have been extended 13 more weeks for a total of 39 weeks.
Another 1.8 million workers in the U.S. will become eligible for the extension through next summer as their regular benefits run out.
For Rucker, unemployment benefits are a big letdown from his $13.60-an-hour salary.
His job disappeared a year ago when BTR PLC, the British owners of Stewart-Warner Corp., shut their Chicago plant and moved about 1,200 jobs to Mexico and the Southwest. It was another closing in the tidal wave that has swept across thousands of factories in the U.S. in the last decade.
Rucker qualifies for the maximum benefit of $270 a week because he was paid more than $21,788 a year when he was working. Since the peak of the last recession, the maximum payment in Illinois has fallen behind inflationar. Adjusting for inflation since 1982, Illinois should be paying $277 a week.
Even so, Rucker`s benefit is more than most workers get.
The average unemployment check in the U.S., according to federal officials, is $167 a week. Louisiana pays the lowest at $107 a week and Maryland the highest at $220 a week.
And while the average unemployment paycheck in Illinois is $177 a week, in Indiana it drops to $110 a week.
The AFL-CIO says average weekly unemployment benefits paid in the U.S. are less than 40 percent of the average worker`s former salary. They note that a federal commission several years ago urged states to raise it to 50 percent. Similarly, union officials point out the difference in the availability of benefits today compared with other recessions.
When a downturn gripped the nation in 1974 and 1975, the government extended unemployment benefits for up to 75 weeks. It did the same in 1982, stretching the benefits up to 65 weeks. But the latest extension will bring benefits up to only 46 weeks in a handful of states.
In the recession of the mid-1970s, three-quarters of all unemployed workers received jobless benefits. By 1982, the amount dropped to 43 percent, and today it is about 40 percent, according to union officials and experts.
That`s because many states have tightened their eligibility requirements. They reacted to the last recession, which boosted their unemployment costs, and plunged many into financial problems.
The states required workers to earn more money and to have kept a job longer. At least 10 states no longer allow workers who quit to receive benefits after a waiting period, and a number of other states lengthened the waiting period, said Wayne Vroman, an economist with the Urban Institute in Washington.
And in today`s economy, many unskilled blue-collar workers do not hold jobs long enough to qualify for jobless benefits. In Illinois, there is no specific weekly requirement, but you must earn no less than $1,600 in a recent one-year period.
”It is no longer serving as a real social insurance program,” said Alex Keyssar, a professor of labor history at Duke University. ”Until the 1960s, unemployment insurance was seen as a necessary stopgap. There was a faith that the problem would be eradicated soon. But we have lost that faith.”
Audrey Freedman, an economist with the Conference Board, a business think tank in New York, agrees that the permanent level of unemployment, the core rate that will remain even after an economic recovery, has reached an unprecedented high. She expects U.S. unemployment to drop to 6 percent next year, and hang there.
Rucker is troubled by what the hard times have done to his former fellow workers.
”The Lord has blessed me not to give me too many bills,” he said one morning. ”But I`ve seen guys from this plant hustling cans on the street. And a friend of mine lost his house.”
He keeps up with old workmates because he is an officer with the United Workers Association-United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 1154. The union joined with the Greater West Town Community Development Project last year in a federally funded program to retrain the workers.
Because the company moved the workers` jobs across the border, they qualify for federal Trade Re-Adjustment Assistance, which allows them to receive up to 52 added weeks of unemployment benefits if they are in training. Even with the extended benefits, however, many struggle.
Jim Schultz, a vocational and education counselor at the local`s office, recited some of the troubles he has seen workers encounter.
”They don`t have any health insurance and so they scrounge around at the neighborhood clinics,” he said. They also often cannot pay for their utilities, or their telephones are shut off for non-payment.
But their biggest problem, he said, is temporarily losing their lifelines, their weekly checks. They can miss a check because of a
bureaucratic mistake or their own mistake in filling out forms.
Whatever the reason, some have waited as long as two months to begin receiving the money again, he said.
Just thinking about going without a weekly check unsettles Rucker, a man of simple talk and clear goals. He came to Chicago from Blyesville, Ark., 20 years ago and went to work as a janitor. Within a year, he had a job at Stewart-Warner.
His goal now, he said, is finishing by March his federally funded studies at the Consumer Electronics Training Center to be a television or videocassette recorder repairman, and then getting on with his life.
But his first goal is caring for his wife, Cordellia, and two children, Demetrius, 13, and Sabrina, 8.
It has been rough, especially going through $6,000 in savings in the last year. Cordellia recently found a job as a bus driver, and brings home about $100 a week.
Rucker gave up his health insurance six months ago, and now hopes nothing tragic happens.
He no longer uses credit cards, but still pays about $40 a month on them. He stopped dry cleaning the family`s clothes. He never goes to movies or shows, and he doubts there will be Christmas gifts.
If anything goes wrong at home, he repairs it.
He used to bowl twice a week and had a 170 average. He no longer bowls. He hasn`t bought clothes for the family since he was laid off. Nor has he bought anything for the house.
He used to take the family on car rides. No more. He pays $165 a month on his 1985 Cadillac Seville and another $20 on gas weekly. His 1983 Ford LTD is paid off.
He makes sure he pays his monthly mortgage of $452 on his six-room house on Chicago`s Northwest Side. He also tries not to miss his light and gas bills, which run about $140 a month combined.
He has cut the telephone bill down to about $30, and tries not to spend more than $40 a week when he does the food shopping. He searches for bargains and buys generic products whenever possible. The family used to eat steaks or fish every so often. Now they eat hamburgers or noodle dishes.
He is not downbeat, but there is little spark to him.
”I am a survivor, and I`m not going to give up,” he said with no emotion. ”I`m going to keep trying.”
