PULLING UP THE DRAWBRIDGE NOT COPING WITH RETRENCHMENT

Silling at home alone on a weekday morning when everyone else was at work, T.R. fell bereft. He was grieving for his old world. After 26 years at the same organisation he had been retrenched and his life had become unrecognisable. In a few weeks it had changed from that of a successful, frenetically busy supervisor to that of a man just sitting around at home.

As he sat there, it dawned on him that he was going through the same stages that people go through when they lose a loved one. In many ways, what he had lost was the equivalent of a relationship. He had lost his daily activity and the social interaction that went with it. A major source of his creativity and mastery was gone, he had no sense of purpose and the strong identity he had built within his job had vanished too.

His income had also gone. All through the rough economic times, when others had lost their jobs, he had kept his, believing all the time that he was indispensable.

At the age of 52 he was unprepared for the shock, disbelief and anger that often follow retrenchment. Even though his competence had never been questioned, he couldn’t help feeling he had failed himself and his family.

At the time my father silently worried about me. He had been through the Great Depression and knew what it was like to be out of work or to have it and then lose it. Now, in his 80s, he saw me suddenly in the same position. It took me some time to recognise the pain both he and my mother were experiencing.

T think it’s appropriate to talk about grief in the context of loss of work in mid-career. I was in despair and didn’t know what to do. I was lost.’

Throughout this period these lines from Dante’s Divine Comedy kept going though his mind: ‘Halfway along the path of life, I found myself in a wood so dark that the way ahead was lost to sight.’

For the next 6 months he languished at home, searching for a way through his grief, trying to make sense of what had happened. Then a friend offered him 4 hours a week lecturing at the local university.

‘Those 4 hours were just wonderful. They gave me back so much,’ he says. ‘They were the beginning of my rebuilding.’ The lecturing led to other bits and pieces and eventually to full-time work.

Despite having lodged more than 120 job applications during his dark period, he says every bit of work he got came through personal contacts and networks. He went on to work with mid-career men who were out of a job. He has found that following retrenchment, the first response is usually shock, because men always think it will happen to someone else. Then there is the pain of saying goodbye. These days, many middle-to-high-level managers are shown the door as soon as they are informed that they are to be retrenched and given little opportunity for farewells or occasions at which their long service or achievements can be publicly acknowledged. Others work on for a few weeks feeling increasingly alienated and unwanted. They see their names disappear from internal correspondence lists, hear colleagues making a claim for their desk or computer and are excluded from meetings of the new order.

The first few weeks at home can be unsettling. Everything is thrown up in the air and new roles and routines have to be negotiated. For the family it is a time of collective stress. In these situations there is often misunderstanding and conflict. Few think of preparing children for the consequences of a parent’s loss of work.

At home, the man’s sense of isolation can be heightened in many ways. Phone calls to former colleagues or professional contacts are often not returned and job applications not even acknowledged. The isolation can become intense. Some report that their day revolves around the mail delivery and the hope it will bring good news.

There is very little formal structure in place to help mid-career men cope with job loss. While there are numerous strategies for helping unemployed youth, the existence of this older group is barely recognised.

Even so, many can’t bring themselves to take advantage of the little that is offered and eventually only do so under pressure from their wives.

‘These men want to keep out of sight. They want to avoid social situations where they have to disclose their loss of employment. I call it the drawbridge syndrome – fill up the moat, raise the drawbridge and shut out the world.’

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