By Marilyn Odendahl, Truth Staff
modendahl@etruth.com
ELKHART -- The crowd was enormous and the wait was hours long, but Dwayne Redmond was determined to stay until they told him to leave.
At 50 years old, the chef had suddenly found himself out of a job when his former employer closed the restaurant where he cooked. One month unemployed turned into two months, then three months. He filled his days with exercise and volunteer activities at the Elkhart Salvation Army, but the time without work stretched into four months, then five.
When his joblessness hit six months, Redmond saw an announcement in the newspaper that Mad Anthony's Brewing Co. was opening a pub on South Main Street and was looking for wait staff, bartenders and kitchen help. He stood in line for nearly three hours at the restaurant with hundreds of others who came with the hope of getting a job.
"I wasn't going to leave until they told me no," Redmond said.
They did not tell him no. Friday he stood in the middle of the kitchen, smiling and preparing meals for the lunch crowd.
Redmond is among the roughly 82 percent of the Elkhart County residents who have a job. Although the work continues and the paychecks still come, many of those who are employed fear the recession could take their job next.
However, unemployment figures, released from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, show the economy did not erase any jobs in February. In fact, unemployment dropped slightly in Elkhart County, providing a welcome relief from a jobless rate that has been rising each month since August and cracked the double-digit mark in October.
During the second month of 2009, the unemployment rate fell to 18.0 percent, down from 18.3 percent in January but up significantly from the 5.5 percent recorded in February 2008. Comparatively, the state's jobless rate rose to 10.1 percent and the nation's rate climbed to 8.9 percent.
The cities of Elkhart and Goshen remained the top two Hoosier municipalities with high unemployment. Elkhart's rate edged up to 19.6 from 19.2 in January, while Goshen's fell to 18.1 percent from 18.9 percent. In February 2008, Elkhart and Goshen posted unemployment rates of 6.8 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.
Phil Holderman has held on to his production job at Utilimaster Corp. even as co-workers were laid off.
"I like to think I'm doing a good job," Holderman said. "Not that the people being let go aren't doing a good job. They just haven't been there long enough. That's the problem. A lot of good people are losing their jobs."
Inside the Wakarusa plant, Holderman has noticed his colleagues are more worried, not sure what is going to happen day to day or week to week. He does not stay up at night wondering if the next pink slip will have his name on it, but he acknowledged he is "living more cautiously" and watching what he spends.
Having a job in such a downturn could spur workers to do their tasks better as a way of preventing themselves from getting downsized next, said Michael Pries, associate professor in the department of economics and econometrics at the University of Notre Dame. But despite their efforts, employees have little bargaining power in this environment and probably are seeing their compensation cut.
"Even though they still have a job," Pries said, "they're going to suffer because they aren't going to get their yearly raises."
At Millennium Products, plant manager Kevin Hamby has the general foreman pull time cards every Thursday to calculate how many hours the workers have left before they reach overtime. This down cycle is forcing businesses to manage every penny and employees to work harder, he explained.
"I think the mental state of anybody who has a job in Elkhart County is, 'Will the company be able to make it through the recession?'" Hamby said.
After 30 years of always having a job, Hamby himself got laid off about a year ago from the marine industry. In the five months he was unemployed, he filled out thousands of job applications online, networked with businesses colleagues and cleaned his house often.
He declined a couple of job offers from companies out of state, not wanting to leave home. Just as he began to doubt those decisions, Hamby landed the job at Millennium.
He described getting the job as "very encouraging" and compared it to "seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."
For Redmond, getting the chef's position at Mad Anthony's brought elation.
On the day he waited in line, he was given a job application, an interview and finally an offer. Redmond remembered he was so happy that he grabbed the manager and hugged her. Then, the following Sunday, he went to church, got on his knees and thanked God.
Making the sign of the cross, Redmond said, "I know now exactly what it means to have a job."