Staying Afloat While Your Job Sinks

Faced With Impending Layoffs, Workers Can Buoy One Another or Jump Ship

Beatrice M. Spadacini found out in early August that the funding for a project she worked on at a Baltimore nonprofit organization was ending, meaning that her job would disappear by the end of the year. But in the meantime, she and her project co-workers were to stay on to finish their work.

It is not an easy task to go into work each day knowing that your job is finite.

But Spadacini and 23 co-workers at the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities have turned bad news into good, as they have cheered one another on while they worked and searched for new jobs. They have talked about all they have accomplished, and they have worked hard to make sure their accomplishments do not disappear into the ether.

"It was a very humbling experience," Spadacini said. "You don't expect it, and you're sort of numb and like, 'Oh, my God, what am I going to do now?' "

Spadacini and her boss on the project, Carol Michaels O'Laughlin, decided to track their group's job search.

Four employees in the Baltimore office marked on a white board when they had interviews. They got an extra point when companies called them unsolicited. They crossed out their points when companies turned them down or when they rejected offers. And when one of them received a job, everyone cheered. Even people from other companies in the building would come to the office to track the status on the white board.

And when an employee in Asia gets a job, the whole group celebrates via e-mail.

(O'Laughlin is still looking for a job. Spadacini just got an offer for a nonprofit in Washington.)

"I think when you're part of a broader group, maybe in a sick way, it makes it easier," O'Laughlin said.

A lot of groups have similar circumstances. America Online Inc.'s employees are waiting anxiously for word on who will be let go in a round of 700 firings, due next month. They spend their days trying to complete their work and hoping to be passed over during the layoffs, which many employees first heard about a few weeks ago. Others are polishing (or being told to polish) their résumés and thinking about their next move. The situation has understandably cast a pall over the Northern Virginia campus, as it would anywhere.