Public Employee Press

School Construction Authority
Architect escapes part-time hell

It was an indignity that a veteran professional worker in the public sector doesn’t expect.

“One day we were called into a room and they read off a list of people who were going to be laid off,” said Architect Kashi Nath Ray, who was laid off in 2003 and returned to the School Construction Authority on May 19. “When I went back to my seat, the computer was down. I was denied access to drawings that as an architect I would need to find work.”

Ray, 61, described the layoff and struggle with unemployment as the most traumatizing and devastating experience in his life except for the loss of his father as a 15-year-old in India. He came to the United States in 1968 at 24.

To make matters especially awful, the layoff hit just as his wife, Banasri, lost her information technology job and only managed to find new work for a bank at third of the pay. “All the computer jobs are going to India,” Ray said with a wry smile.

His eldest son, Akash, now 24, also took the loss hard. Because of the $40,000 tuition bill facing the family, he decided to stop studying at Johns Hopkins University, where he has since re-enrolled.

Financial pressure
Under financial pressure, the family sold its vacation home in the Poconos. Ray took out a $250,000 home equity loan and borrowed from his pension (with a 33 percent penalty) to meet living expenses. The family also considered returning to India.

During the four years, Ray got by with temporary jobs that paid a decent $40 an hour but included no medical benefits or vacation. The permanent jobs he found had benefits but paid about 20 percent less than the temp jobs.

After his experience as an older worker in the private sector, Ray said he felt relieved to return to the SCA, where he originally started in 1991 and now can count on good benefits and an $86,000 annual salary. “Being laid off wasn’t the end of my life, since I learned to cope with adversity as the eldest male when my father died,” Ray said. “But it was especially difficult for my wife and two sons.”

The union’s successful fight-back on behalf of the laid-off SCA workers — including a lawsuit — deepened his appreciation for organized labor, the civil service system and the rule of law in the United States, Ray said.

— Gregory N. Heires