Financial Impact

Michele — The financial aspects? I was struggling. And honestly, I'm still struggling. Trying to make ends meet and all that. My husband tried picking up some overtime where he works at, but because he had to add me to his health insurance, he's paying more out for health insurance. Honestly, I'm living paycheck to paycheck and that's it. I have just enough to cover with what I'm making right now. 

Pat — I mean, any way I look at it, I was blackmailed. If I didn't sign the paper [which stated that Oberlin negotiated in good faith], then I was not having anything for six months, well as it was, it took me almost three months to get an unemployment check...That three months time I would have lost my house and everything else.

Mary — Oh, a lot. Because all of a sudden, okay, I have this many paychecks and and I've got this many bills. So if I re up and I get this paid off, too, that's that many less. Let's try and get everything paid. We were supposed to be able to work to the end of August. Then they decided we had three months severance, and then they decided $10,000 severance and that on August 15th they wanted us gone. "We're not going to pay you for those two weeks because you're getting severance anyway." Well, you know what? When you're losing your job, that two weeks is a big deal.

Diane — As a matter of fact, at the last meeting with Rebecca [Skillings], when she basically kinda told us our jobs were on the line, I actually went up to her and asked her, you know, "If i'm 61 years old, how am I going to be able to start over at my age? Who's going to hire me at my age? And, you know, I'm limited in what I can do now at my age." And she's like, "oh, they can't use your age against you when you apply for jobs" and I just looked at her like she was nuts and I was like, but they will. 

Eugene — [So I'm wondering, did you apply to work for AVI or Scioto after the outsourcing?] I don't think we were really welcome to. I don't think they actually-- I don't think anybody got hired from there. And honestly, I have a family of four kids, how am I going to support four kids with a $15 an hour job or $14 an hour job? It's not possible. 

Susan Carroll — I had to do things that I didn't really want to do in order to stay in my home, you know? And, you know, I just I always planned on retiring from there, and I never, in my whole life, ever thought I would lose my job.

Diane — I don’t go to the doctors, I have things go wrong with me and I just hope they just go away and I wait. Where before I would go and get it checked out but now I wait. I think the thing that bugs me the most is not being able to go spend money on my grandkids. [laughs]

Jack — My wife is working, but that's all I have. After I pay the medical, I have $32 left to my name, and that doesn't do anything. I give it to the wife and my wife is working--. Since this happened, my wife has been working--she's gonna kill herself working because, if she's not working like she is, we're going to lose the house. I never thought I'd be at this age and still in a predicament where it's possible to lose my house. All the bills she's covering. I don't have a car payment anymore because I sold my car and I bought this old beater thing that I drive. I don't have a decent car to travel with no more, I don't have a new car. I've adjusted to keep insurance down. My wife, she leaves for work 5:30, 6:00 in the morning and doesn't get home till 9:00 at night, she's working seven days a week. And it's just because I don't have an income coming in, she's been covering us and, you know. It makes a person feel very-- worthless. Not having no income, not being able to help, not being able to find a job. Not thinking down the road, where am I going to be, cause I'm not at the point I thought I would be for retirement. It's just a very scary situation to be in.

Vince — I ended up landing a job at a temporary Pepperidge Farms in Willard and I just couldn't do it, they work 19 days straight. I could not do it. You know, I didn't have health reasons. I couldn’t do it.

Jeff — I tell people, well I had enough money, but in reality, Oberlin College forced me to withdraw all my retirement funds. So I have to start over again from zero. So I haven't been working for the past two years and I've been going to LC-three [Lorain County Community College (LCCC)] for Micro Electromechanical Systems and Applied Science Study here. So um, no, as soon as I discovered this program and I kind of like looked into it, um, there was no chance in hell that I was ever going to come back to Oberlin.

Ted — Y'know, everything is more expensive. Then, it's like, getting a job for me being my age is kind of sketchy. It's it's, like we were saying, it would have been a whole different outcome if there wouldn't have been a pandemic. But it was the worst time to get dumped out on the street when you're dealing with that. And then you're also dealing without having a job now. And you're not--. You know, it's different. I've worked at factories in the eighties where for like six years, well my brothers, they both left, but I ended up hanging in there, but I would go stretches where I wouldn't-- I've even run out of unemployment, 'cause unemployment wasn't anything back then. Like 13 weeks and that was it. But you, you don't know, just the point where I was headed with that. But anyways, you know, you get out of work, you gotta go find something else. It's like, where are you going to go? Where do you want to go? You know?

Mary — The college actually sent me a letter after we lost our jobs, "congratulations on your retirement." And then they had a paper behind that "Would you fill this in?" And "how could you improve working at the college?" You know, ask questions. I went, I sent it in, I said, You fucking fired me. I didn't retire. Are you kidding me? I mean, why would you send letters out to people like that? They sent letters out. "I heard that you're leaving the company. And could you...?" Why would you treat people that way? I have friends that have lost their homes. I have friends that I know, their kids were expecting to go to college because of the benefits.

Marsha — I enrolled back in school. I was able to grab a pretty amazing job at the Cleveland Clinic, working in the laboratory, in pathology. It still doesn't pay what the college pays and I don't get health insurance because all they were hiring for at the time was PRNs, which is as-needed employees, and they do not offer their PRNs health insurance so here I am. I'd like to go back to school again and further into the medical field a little farther. It was hard to get this job so I don't want to leave to try to go somewhere else. I'd like to utilize my time there. A and it's a good way -- if you work for the Cleveland Cleveland Clinic or UAH or Mercy or any hospital, they do have tuition assistance. I'd like to further out of the lab and try to go into radiology. But, like I said, I don't get health insurance, I don't get PTO time. I don't get paid holidays, I don't get sick days My son has a heart condition and eventually he needs open heart surgery and that's not gonna happen if his mother doesn't have health insurance still.

Jeff — I just bought a house, and then I got fired, and I had to cash my retirement out. Now, for me, I'm going to be working in a field that is growing and pays a lot of money and is skilled, and the whole nine yards. So essentially when I took all the money out of my retirement, I bet on myself, that I can get that money back there in a timely manner and grow it again to the point where I can retire at a reasonable age and I am certain one, 100% certain, that that will happen. But yeah, Oberlin College's decision definitely did cost me somewhere around -- and then you count the interest that would have been, I would've been contributing more and I would have been growing it as far as the standard growth goes. So, they cost me somewhere, probably approaching $100,000.