A Year to Learn Laid-off millworkers in Katahdin region adjust with support and retraining from local education center

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When Millinocket resident Wayne Kidney was finishing his schooling for the first time, 38 years ago, good grades and homework often took a back seat to hanging out with the guys.

The motivation to study wasn’t as strong as it could have been, Kidney admits, mostly because he assumed he would start work at Great Northern’s Millinocket paper mill after high school.

Expecting to be a third-generation mill employee, Kidney was hired by the company more than a month before he graduated in 1965 from Stearns High School.

“Most of the guys I hung around with were going to work at the mill anyway, so we thought why do we need to bother with all of this,” Kidney said.

For the better part of the next four decades, Kidney enjoyed a job as a janitor in the mill’s Engineering and Research Building. On the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift, he could do his job well and without interruption and he was able to work with and for some “good people.”

And he would have been there until he retired, Kidney said, if the Great Northern mills in East Millinocket and Millinocket hadn’t closed last Dec. 26 and declared bankruptcy in January. Those closings ultimately caused his layoff, along with 1,100 of his co-workers. Like many of those displaced, Kidney lost not only his livelihood, but also a large part of his identity.

At a loss for what to do next, he maintained a holding pattern for a couple of months and collected unemployment.

“I still had it in the back of mind that the mill would start back up and I’d be back to work in a few months,” Kidney said. “It never happened.”

Resigned to moving on, Kidney went to the career center at the Katahdin Region Higher Education Center in East Millinocket and set up a new resume, although numerous job searches turned up only dead ends.

Kidney, 56, didn’t enjoy school the first time. With his options drying up, he summoned his courage and walked back into the classrooms at KRHEC. In the last eight months, he has been introduced to sociology and psychology, as well as crisis management and the topic of violence in the family. Determined to work harder this time, he hopes to receive his one-year certificate in human services in August before finding a job working with children.

Before the mill closing, Kidney never thought he’d return to the late-night grind of writing papers and cramming for tests.

“I had no idea I could do what I’m doing,” Kidney said.

Where are they now?

Close to 500 other displaced GNP workers have shared the path with Kidney to retraining and further education at KRHEC or similar centers in Dover and Houlton, according to Carl Segee, a peer support worker with the AFL-CIO office at the center.

Over the last year, Segee and four other support workers have been keeping tabs on people laid off in December 2002 as well as those from layoffs GNP made from July to September of that year.

In the “master list” of 1,300 people, roughly 400 went back to work at the East Millinocket facility in June when it was restarted by its new owner, Brascan, under the banner of Katahdin Paper Co. Another 300 have taken on employment elsewhere, by recent estimates, but some of the positions were seasonal.

“People have taken jobs with construction companies, and that’s cyclical work,” Segee said recently. “Lately, it’s been slowly drying up.”

While a small number have moved away, there are also close to 100 workers who have not pursued re-education options at KRHEC, despite the fact that their unemployment benefits which may soon run out, Segee said.

But most are retraining at KRHEC for free with the support of federal grants, he said. The center offers college-level courses, vocational classes, high school and GED completion, and nontraditional classes, such as small-business planning or commercial driving. The staff also works to arrange classes not offered through the center.

Some millworkers have been operating forklifts or other equipment for decades and yet they don’t have proper certification, he said. More than 50 people are enrolled in the heavy machinery class and another 25 are taking supervisory training courses at the center, he said.

“In order to sell yourself, you have to have documentation and that’s what some people are doing right now,” Segee said.

With anxiety

While retraining and re-education have offered a new start and sometimes new hope to hundreds of displaced workers, the initial anxiety about going back to school has represented a difficult hurdle for many.

Decades after finishing high school programs and successful stints at one of the two paper mills, workers can find the thought of failing to be a very real stumbling block, according to Deb Rountree, director of KRHEC.

To complicate matters, the education setting isn’t exactly the way many workers remember it, she said. Books and lectures now share the stage with personal computers and the Internet. Term papers often require the use of academic journals and electronic archives from universities that are hundreds of miles away.

Sitting in class next to someone straight out of high school also can make the transition nerve-racking for some of the older workers, she said.

“Fear is probably the greatest challenge,” Rountree said. “There’s a lack of confidence. Many of them have always been the provider in their family, and now they’ve lost that.”

A single mother, Judi Ham of Medway never believed the mill would cease to function. While she anticipated some layoffs last year, she was fairly certain she would maintain her human resources job in the East Millinocket mill where she worked for 26 years.

In September, Ham, 45, went back to update her one-year secretarial certificate, but found herself overwhelmed by the three-hour classes and an unfamiliar routine. After starting on a Tuesday, Ham had convinced herself by Thursday that she wasn’t going back.

“With all the homework and tests I just thought, ‘No way,'” she said. “I guess I basically had a panic attack.”

After instructors called and visited her home to offer support, Ham was back in the classroom the next Tuesday, but it would be awhile before she developed the confidence her full-time classes required. Over the next four months, she applied herself, aced several tests and realized that she could succeed in her new environment.

Looking back, Ham said it was the fear of failure that nearly prevented her from going back.

“I think a lot of us older workers have such a high expectation of ourselves,” Ham said. “I was not out to just pass the class.”

Getting ahead

Although school might never have been in the plans for these displaced workers, it has been an opportunity for the students like Ham to again take pride in their personal accomplishments, according to Lana Robinson, who teaches college composition and oral communication at KRHEC.

Additionally, the ups and downs of their life experiences have actually served as an advantage in this midlife phase of education, she said.

Writing has been cathartic for these people, some of whom are still processing feelings of betrayal and anger, she said. The classes also have included cancer survivors, as well as people who have lost loved ones or have parents with Alzheimer’s disease, she said.

“Their writing is very rich, as are the topics they pick,” Robinson said. “They aren’t like a high school student who hasn’t dealt with some of life’s issues.”

Maybe an even more integral part of the re-education process has been peer support, a point on which Robinson and Rountree agree. Because these people were much in the same situation, the students have pulled together almost like a new family, Rountree said.

“When people have encouragement and support, it enables a lifetime of change,” Rountree said. “These same people who came in with low self-esteem are now getting A’s and B’s and they now know they can do this.”

“It’s more amazing than anything I’ve ever seen,” Rountree said.

For all the benefits that retraining has too offer, many of the students remain realistic about life after school. A future in a new field may not be completely practical for people like Real Dumais, 49. A paper machine operator for almost 20 years in the Millinocket mill, Dumais is pursuing a one-year certificate in the electrical field.

He would prefer to keep his home in Millinocket, but he has to be able to find work with his certificate. It’s likely he would have to start at an entry-level position, he said, and that is provided he can get a job offer over other qualified applicants.

“Even though you get a certificate, you may still have to compete with college kids for a job,” Dumais said.

He is pursuing retraining, but he already has decided what he will do if he receives word that the mill is in need of operators.

“If I get a phone call, I’m going back,” Dumais said. “It’s probably a no-brainer there.”

In the meantime, Dumais has settled into the routine at KRHEC and isn’t giving up his plans to become an electrician.

“I’m too young to retire,” Dumais said. “I’ve got to do something.”