Don and Sandy Krall are cannon fodder on the front lines of the global manufacturing wars.
Both in their late 40s, the husband and wife were laid off by separate employers just before Christmas, each a victim of the sudden, swift downturn in manufacturing employment in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., that saw 3,400 jobs wiped out.
But being unemployed is nothing new for the Kralls, whose working lives have been a constant turnover of jobs, punctuated by layoffs and plant closings.
Their careers give credence to the image of Kitchener-Waterloo as one of the most resilient areas of the country. As this manufacturing region has passed through waves of restructuring, the Kralls have shuffled among more than 20 companies between them since they quit high school.
Each time they lost jobs, they gained new ones, until this year, when their perpetual optimism turned into soul searching. "Maybe getting into manufacturing as a career was the wrong choice because now it's being eliminated," says Sandy Krall, 46, who recently picked up work in an office at Wilfrid Laurier University.
She notes that her co-workers at the university have the job security she has never enjoyed in her life. She can't remember how many times she has changed jobs -- it could be as many as 15. Five years was the longest with one employer -- in the early 1980s when she worked for Electrohome making TV monitors. But it got out of the business.
Most recently, she was laid off at NCR Canada Ltd., where she helped make automated banking machines. She had been there only four months when the axe fell.
Don Krall, 49, was laid off from auto parts maker ThyssenKrupp Budd last November -- the second time in a year he was cut by Budd. But he's had a more stable work life than Sandy, having served five firms in 30 years, including a 15-year stint at the old Forsyth shirt factory in Kitchener.
But when John Forsyth Co. Inc. consolidated operations in nearby Cambridge, it said established workers would have to reapply for their jobs. Mr. Krall quit and soon landed a position at AG Simpson, an auto parts firm. But it went through a financial crisis and he was gone.
He figured he had won the lottery five years ago when he signed up at Budd for a job paying $30 an hour. At one point, he was making as much as $45 an hour welding subassemblies for sport utility vehicles, not bad for a guy who dropped out of high school at 16.
The parents of two students, the Kralls could afford a house with a pool and a $100,000 mortgage. Their 20-year-old son is planning to go to college in the fall to study jewellery making; their 17-year-old daughter is in high school.
But the past year has been a nightmare, as Budd retrenched in the softer North American auto market. Mr. Krall was laid off in early 2005, then recalled last October -- but only for six weeks.
Mr. Krall, who like his wife has upgraded to a Grade 12 education, has also picked up a short-term job at the university, helping move warehouse contents.
"We're getting into pretty rough water, I guess," says Mr. Krall, who is no longer receiving employment insurance. "If this job disappears, I get no income at all.
"We're keeping our head above water so far," he says, adding that they want to avoid dipping into retirement savings to keep the house.
He relentlessly trawls the Internet looking at service and labourers' positions that pay as little as $9 or $10 an hour. He was a welder for Budd but he doesn't have the provincial certification that many employers require.
Ms. Krall knows there are jobs in the strong local tech industry. But she can't see working the kind of hours required by some of them -- three 12-hour days, followed by a couple of days off. What's more, the wages for tech assembly workers are actually quite low.
Mr. Krall has thought about leaving the area, but where to? He hears about house framing jobs in Alberta. But that's a younger man's job, and it would mean leaving family and friends. "Most people I know still live in this area," he says. "It's a nice community, peaceful and not really violent."
He just wishes he could get a little stability in his work. There was a time when a man had one job for a lifetime. Now he's lucky if it's for five years.
Recently, the Kralls got some good news -- Sandy is being recalled by NCR. She finished her university contract yesterday, and will start back at $11.50 an hour. She has no illusions, however, that it will be a long-term engagement.
