Maureen Quinlan, 50, has been out of work for nearly 800 days, and says her prospects of finding a new job seem worse than ever.
A Trumbull resident, Quinlan worked at Perkin-Elmer in Shelton until 2011, when she and about 30 percent of the company’s work force was laid off as part of a reorganization effort.
Quinlan said she was sad, but figured she’d be able to get another job pretty quickly, as she had during previous brief stints of unemployment.
She was wrong.
“The ability to find work and provide for my family has been incredibly difficult,” Quinlan, a single parent, said at Stelray Plastic Products on Ansonia’s Westfield Avenue.
The business was the setting Wednesday for a visit from Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who are trying to drum up support for a bill, The Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2014, that would make it illegal for employers or employment agencies from discriminating against unemployed job-seekers.
The lawmakers pointed to people like Quinlan as examples of perfectly qualified candidates who are getting squeezed out of the job market, arguing that discrimination against those out of work for long periods is just another form of age discrimination.
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At a press conference inside the business, Quinlan and other long-term unemployed said their age, and today’s economic environment, puts them at a disadvantage while looking for work.
When looking for jobs in 2000 and 2005, Quinlan, then in her 30s, said she’d get multiple offers just by registering with an employment agency or following up on leads she’d find herself.
Then big banks ruined the world’s economy in 2008, a downturn from which a “recovery” hasn’t extended to those at the bottom.
“Nothing could have prepared me for what the job market is like now,” Quinlan said. “There’s been a dramatic shift in hiring and recruitment.”
Age Discrimination?
She said employers don’t want employees who have been unemployed for long periods, even though they may have perfectly suitable skills for a given job.
They also cast a wary eye at those with lengthy job histories, said Joel Zaremby, a Norwalk resident who said he was laid off from an advertising sales position about 18 months ago.
Zaremby said he has a better chance of landing an interview by shortening his resume to make it seem like he’s not the 60-something long-term unemployed person he is.
“You always want to be honest with your resume. The market today forces you not to be,” he said. “You have to truncate your resume, at least to get in (for an interview).”
DeLauro and Blumenthal said stories like Quinlan’s and Zaremby’s are all too common, and amount to illegal discrimination by another name.
“More than 40 percent of all the long-term unemployed are over the age of 50,” Blumenthal said. “This is a hidden means of age discrimination, and equally pernicious. Just because somebody’s over 50 doesn’t mean they can’t learn new types of work or become productive in a different skill.”
“I tried everything: revamping the resume, taking workshops, practicing interviewing techniques. Nothing was bringing results,” Quinlan said. “Over time, my sense of self began to erode as my efforts bore no fruit.”
Now, when she hears of a friend or acquaintance who’s lost a job, she said she of course sympathizes with them but also thinks “Darn, now that’s just one more person I could potentially have to compete for a job with.”
“I can’t provide for my child,” Quinlan said while on the verge of tears as DeLauro rubbed her shoulder. “But I’m not going to give up.”
Will This Ever Become Law?
The Democratic lawmakers also took the occasion to say Congress should extend unemployment benefits to long-term unemployed people whose payments ran out late last year.
Blumenthal said he’s confident the Democratically-controlled Senate will arrive at a compromise to extend unemployment payments.
But DeLauro conceded the extension of unemployment benefits — and her proposal — face a tougher prospect of getting through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Govtrack.us, a website that tracks proposed laws and predicts their chance of passage, estimates the bill proposed by DeLauro and Blumenthal has “0 percent chance of being enacted.”
The Valley Indy left a message at Speaker John Boehner’s office Wednesday afternoon asking whether he’d bring the bill to a vote on the floor of the House.
DeLauro and Blumenthal said the issue is an important one to raise whether the bill is passed or not.
And there is no better place than the lower Naugatuck Valley to deliver the message, they said, citing Stelray Plastic Products as an example.
Company president Larry Saffran said he’s not hiring dozens of new workers at a time, but there has been growth.
“Our work force is very stable, we don’t have that much turnover, but we’re seeing steady, gradual growth and as we grow we need more people,” Saffran said.
“This kind of company is our future,” Blumenthal said. “Small and medium manufacturers are on the rise. They’re the way we put America back to work.”
The lawmakers also lauded The Workplace, a nonprofit with offices in Ansonia and Derby that offers programs to those out of work look for jobs.
Joseph Carbone, president and CEO of The Workplace, said the long-term unemployed are up against it in today’s economy.
“Its a tough battle to get back into the labor force when you’ve been out of work six months or longer,” he said. “They don’t need other obstacles in their way. All they want is a chance to be interviewed based on their skills and work record.”
