William S. Hoffman

Hard times and vulnerable people : initial effects of plant closing on autoworkers' mental health

Large-scale 1987 General Motors plant shutdowns offered an unusual opportunity to study effects of actual and anticipated unemployment on mental health. Workers from four closing and 12 nonclosing plants (Ns = 831 and 766 respectively) were interviewed approximately three months before scheduled plant closings. Dependent variables were baseline frequencies of somatic, depressive, and anxiety symptoms. The quasi-experimental design made it possible to explore systematically the mental health problems of individual autoworkers as a function of their employment status, their demographic characteristics, and the interaction of the two. Three groups were formed by dividing workers at closing plants into those already laid off and those anticipating layoff; the third group consisted of workers in nonclosing plants. Results revealed a pattern of interaction between unemployment and demographic variables, showing differential vulnerability to job loss. Less educated blacks were especially affected; follow-up analyses showed that their more distressed mental health could not be attributed entirely to other, prior stressors.

Race, gender, and the response to stress: Autoworkers' vulnerability to long-term unemployment

A three-wave panel study of auto plant closings focused on the mental health effects of unemployment on blue-collar workers. This paper explores how the impact of long-term unemployment varies across race and gender. We also examine whether other demographic factors can themselves modify the impactsof race and gender. Dependent variables include two measures of distress and two drinking measures. Results showed that the effect of long-term unemployment on distress and drinking was more severe among less educated workers, and responses of blacks were especially sensitive to level of education. In addition, men showed a greater association of long-term unemployment with depression (and to some extent anxiety) than did women. Marriage affected the responses of men but not of women, and of whites but not of blacks. Explanatory variables—the workers experiences of financial hardship, other negative life events, and lack of a confidant—largely accounted for male-female differences. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications of these effects and address the limitations of the traditional term “vulnerability” in describing them.

Unemployment and its effects on families: Evidence from a plant closing study

Assessed the impact o f unemployment on the families o f auto workers recently unemployed or anticipating unemployment, as perceived by the workers themselves. A quasi-experimental design is used in the study; workers were sampled from plants scheduled to close (n = 831) and those not closing (n = 766). Results indicate that financial hardship produced by the unemployment experience has powerful negative effects on the families o f these workers. Further results indicate that the stress of unemployment on families is mediated by financial hardship. The stress o f unemployment on families operates largely through financial hardship.

Impact of mental health services use on subsequent mental health of autoworkers

Collecting three waves of panel data offered an unusual opportunity to examine the long-term outcomes of the use of mental health services. Data are drawn from a panel study of autoworkers. Waves 1, 2, and 3 consisted of 1,597, 1,288, and 1,136 workers, respectively, from four closing and 12 non-closing plants in Southeastern Michigan. Our results revealed a surprising finding: use of mental health services, whether in the general or specialty sectors, had a negative impact on the subsequent mental health of autoworkers in our sample. The use of mental health services is associated with increased levels of psychological distress. Further, we show that the negative association between use of mental health services and distress was greater for certain demographic groups, notably Blacks, men, older workers, the poorly educated, and the unemployed, depending upon the type of service used. Finally, we sought to uncover the reasons for the negative impact of services use. Results suggest that self-blame, for one, contributed to the negative impact of using mental health services.

Initial Impact of Plant Closings on Automobile Workers and Their Families

Unemployment caused fry plant closings continues to have a severe impact on automobile workers and their families. Specific findings from the first-year survey data of a longitudinal research project investigating this problem are discussed.

Unemployment and Reemployment

When people think of a plant closing, what comes to mind first is loss of jobs. Second, we tend to reflect on the workers’ limited chances to gain new jobs of any quality. When the employer is a giant like GM, however, even job loss is not so necessary or so automatic as it might at first seem. Unlike small companies, GM can boast other plants to which workers might be sent and other jobs they might be able to fill. Therefore, a first question in the case of plant closings by an industrial giant is deceptively simple: Did workers lose jobs, and if so, how many? Did the losers regain jobs, and if so, where? We turn to these facts next. Because of their general importance in the sociological literature and their role in our own data, we pay special attention here to how blacks and women fared, in comparison to their white, male counterparts.

Individual versus Collective Resources

When a plant closes, people become anxious and depressed. We earlier showed that even workers whose plants don’t close become anxious. But depression rises where plants do close, and only there. It rises because people lose jobs. It rises particularly among certain groups who lack resources to combat it, whose futures look bleak. And it rises both because of the economic meaning of job loss and, we think, because of the loss of role and loss of standing that unemployment eventually comes to mean.

The Persistence of Stress: Negative Life Events in the Recent and Distant Past

This chapter, like its predecessor, concerns those elements the person adds to the equation to convert stressful times into personal distress. This chapter addresses the way events in the immediate or distant past shaped responses to unemployment in our study. Each builds upon earlier chapters. Chapter Three laid out the overall dimensions of the unemployment that followed the 1987 GM plant closings and Chapter Four traced the patterns of individual and family distress. Just as Chapter Five concentrated on the roles and statuses to which identity is attached, Chapter Six concentrated on the self. Chapter Five pointed out that workers did not really talk about their identities in terms of race or gender. Similarly, except for the closing of the GM plants, they also tended to talk about ongoing conditions rather than events. For example, the quote earlier from a closing plant worker describes some of the way a bad situation is made worse when a blow like unemployment is coupled with previous or ongoing stress. The bad marriage referred to here is a chronic Stressor; a separation or divorce, in contrast, is a stressful event. Both are important. The events are easier to ask about. Because chronic Stressors also play a role in the stress process (Pearlin, 1989), it is important not to assume that the questions we asked tapped everything about workers’ pasts that would be relevant to their stress responses to unemployment.

Conclusions: What Have We Learned

This book set out to do two things: first, to attempt to understand the men and women who lost their jobs when General Motors closed auto plants in the late 1980’s. What did downsizing mean to them and their families? Second, we wanted to understand more about the stress process.

The Structure of Stress: Workers’ Characteristics and the Stress Process

The story of workers’ characteristics in this chapter does not begin with a quote from a worker for a simple reason: Closing plant workers did not talk about themselves in this language. Discussions of plant closing or job loss did not lead them to dwell on their gender, race, age, income, education, or (for the most part) their marriages. They talked mostly about unemployment (Chapter Three); later we will turn to the effects of the experience on financial hardships and on the sense of self (Chapter Six). Overall, however, closing plant workers did not reflect upon the way their own characteristics—especially the immutable ones like age or race or gender—might shape their own responses to the stress of plant closing or potential employers’ responses to their attempts to regain jobs.