ChicTrib

Ripple effects from Sept. 11 wash away jobs here

By Julie Deardorff Tribune staff writer Published October 1, 2001

Though terrorists selected East Coast targets more than 800 miles from Rosalyn Huguley's comfortable brick split-level home in a south suburb of Chicago, the 34-year-old mother has become an economic victim of Sept. 11's far-flung upheaval and chaos.

Within days of the attacks, Huguley, a customer service agent supervisor for US Airways at Midway Airport, lost her job--and perhaps a career-- that paid $40,000 per year and allowed her six weeks of vacation and liberal travel.

And since both she and her husband, Bay, are reservists with the National Guard, she worries that their units could be activated and deployed overseas, an unnerving situation for a family with four children from 4 to 17.

"I never, never would have guessed I'd be impacted like this," said Huguley, who had worked at US Airways for 13 years. "Even when the planes were grounded, I thought, `Oh, I'll be off for a few days.' I didn't know I'd be off for a lifetime."

Across the nation, people living and working far from Ground Zero are reeling from the ripple effects caused by the suicide hijackers who crashed commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

While the airline industry has been hardest hit--U.S. companies announced more than 100,000 layoffs in the week after the disaster--the destruction of consumer confidence threatens to damage virtually any kind of business, from tourism and its derivatives to non-profit organizations, as people donate their money to New York-related causes.

"This is not a ripple effect. This is a tsunami," said U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.), who represents a suburban Seattle district with thousands of Boeing workers.

Huge layoffs at companies such as Boeing (30,000 jobs), American Airlines (20,000) and United Airlines (20,000) triggered the domino effect that is reaching virtually everything tangentially connected to it, including airline mechanics, cargo handlers, curbside check-in employees, rental car workers, airport food-service workers, and in-flight meal preparation companies.

The world's largest in-flight catering company, LSG Sky Chefs, has furloughed about 30 percent of its U.S. workforce of 16,000 employees.

In Chicago, 150 people employed by in-flight kitchens were laid off, including Angel Fernandez, a 20-year veteran who worked in food preparation, said Jim DuPont of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 1.

Making Fernandez's situation even more tenuous is that beginning Nov. 1, many airlines are dropping food service on flights of less than four hours.

Hotels half empty

With fewer people flying, hotels have lower occupancy rates than usual. Chicago hotels, normally 75 percent full in September, are at 40 percent occupancy or less, DuPont said.

This affected Diana Chermouh, 26, a room service worker who took orders and delivered meals for $5.95 an hour at the Executive Plaza Hotel, where business was already slow because of construction on Wacker Drive. On Wednesday, she arrived at 5:45 a.m. as usual, but three hours later she was told it was her last day.

"I was last hired," she said, still upbeat despite the news. "We had heard rumors, but you never think it will happen."

Until Sept. 11, Jestina Turner, 43, of Chicago, was a floor supervisor in housekeeping at the Knickerbocker Hotel, where she made $9.95 an hour. She had worked her way up from cleaning rooms and making beds. And at the Sheraton Hotel, Yohannes Gezu, originally of Ethiopia, worked in room service for six years. Neither of them is being scheduled for any work and they consider themselves unemployed.

"Because people are being told they aren't needed for the next six months, the actual number of layoffs is relatively small," said DuPont, whose union has 15,000 members. "But the number of people not scheduled to work in September seems to be around two or three thousand."

For many, the lost income for just one month can be crippling. Both Turner and Gezu doubt they will get their jobs back.

"It has devastated me financially. I have no income at all," said Turner, who lives on the West Side. "All I can say is, I don't know where the next meal is coming from."Gezu, who is married and has a 1-year-old son, believes it is foolish to look for a job when others are getting laid off.

"You have to pay rent, pay bills but you can't find another job because everything is connected," Gezu said. "It's not just the hotel business."

Chermouh's husband, Mojktar, is from Morocco. He drives a Chicago cab, but his business is hurting because of anti-Arab sentiment, she said.

In Los Angeles, the local chapter of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals announced the closing of two pet adoption centers and the firing of eight workers because of a sudden decline in contributions. Many would-be donors instead gave to relief efforts for New York and Washington, and declining stock values cut the worth of the organization's endowment in half.

Security keeps customers away

While many restaurants are recovering from a few days of lost business, those in office buildings are feeling the impact of heightened security.

Eadies Kitchen and Market on the second floor of the Sears Tower and the food court in the Aon Building had attracted customers other than tenants. But business has been down because identification is needed to get into the buildings.

Huguley's life was dually upended when US Airways announced it was laying off 11,000 workers in a "system displacement," and the nation's military was engaged.

Because of her seniority, she has a relocation option to another state, but she isn't sure she wants to uproot her children. Nor is there any guarantee she won't get laid off at her new job. Her husband works at a steel mill in Riverdale that has filed for bankruptcy.

Uncertain about her future schedule, she dropped the hospitality management classes she was taking at Chicago State University.

Although she is now shopping at Aldi rather than Jewel, cutting back on eating out and curtailing her shoe shopping, Huguley still feels fortunate.

"If it had happened at any other time, I would have been more upset," she said. "My biggest worry is trying to stay out of combat. Plus I think about all the people in the World Trade Center. Compared to that, losing your job is no big deal."

Biggest worry trying to stay out of combat? So why the hell did she join the National Guard??? Love, OG

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2001

Answers

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/273/world/Business_confidence_worsens_ in:.shtml

Business confidence worsens in Japan in aftermath of U.S. terrorist attacks

By Associated Press, 9/30/2001 23:37

TOKYO (AP) Japanese business sentiment worsened sharply in the third quarter, a key central bank survey showed Monday, revealing the economy's slide into recession may be accelerating in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States.

The Bank of Japan's ''tankan'' survey showed business confidence among executives at large Japanese manufacturers was minus 33, down sharply from minus 16 in the April-June quarter.

It was the third straight quarter in which the survey's key indicator has been negative meaning big-business leaders who have little faith that the economy can emerge from its deepest postwar downturn outnumber those who think the economy is poised to rebound.

The latest survey results were somewhat worse than expected. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast on average that the index for large manufacturers would read minus 30.

The 17-point drop from June marked the third straight quarter of worsening sentiment and the rate of deterioration beat a 15-point decline in March 2001 the worst since March 1998 when Japan was embroiled in a region-wide financial crisis .

The nosedive in sentiment highlighted the beating corporate Japan has taken, as rapid economic downturn, plunging stock prices, slumping exports, and deep uncertainty about the outlook in the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. pummeled the business environment.

Concerns about the fallout from the terrorist attacks in the U.S. Japan's largest export market likely weighed heavily on corporate minds.

The latest tankan, which surveyed companies from late-August to early September, includes replies accepted for more than two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, which have caused global economic uncertainty.

Major stock markets plummeted as hopes for a U.S. economic recovery this year all but evaporated, while Japanese share prices still linger near 18-year lows.

Japan was already in a deep downturn even before the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

Japan's unemployment remained at a record high 5 percent in August, after climbing to that worst level in July since the government began taking statistics in 1953. The Tokyo stock market's main index, the 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average, slumped to its near 18-year low, last month.

Faced with a slowing global economy, many Japanese companies have released plans to trim planned investments and production, while announcing job-cuts before the attacks.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2001

And this is only a small catastrophe in the physical sense. Imagine what we will go through if an earthquake, the "Big One" they talk about, hits California from LA to San Fran. What will that do to our plans? We all live in little dream worlds that are just a blink away from changing our lives forever.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2001