Long-Term Unemployment On Long Island Examined In New Film

When he first lost his job, Alan Fromm didn't think unemployment would be too difficult for him to handle. After all, he'd been through a lot in his life.

"I was struck by lightning when I was 15. I had heart trouble when I was 21," he says. "I was at the World Trade Center -- I'd just started a new job -- when it was bombed for the first time. And a few months after that I was on the Long Island Rail Road when Colin Ferguson shot all those people. And most recently I was in the World Trade Center when it collapsed.

"So you put all this stuff into perspective, being unemployed is something I can deal with very easily."

It turned out to be harder than he expected. Fromm's struggle with a jobless spell that lasted longer than a year is shown in "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," an HBO documentary premiering at the Hamptons Film Festival this Saturday.

The movie's producers, Daphne Pinkerson and Marc Levin, say their film combats the myth that the unemployed are lazy. It's the third in a series of labor-focused films, the first looking at the decline of New York City's garment industry and the second a take on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.

"Hard Times" follows Fromm and a handful of other white collar Long Island families coping with the anxiety and despair of long-term joblessness. Pinkerson said she and Levin tracked Fromm for six months starting in 2010, accompanying him to the hospital when he donated blood and joining him at a diner where he commiserated with other jobless folks. Where, they wanted to know, had they gone wrong?

Fromm, a former corporate trainer, describes being turned down for a job driving a FedEx truck during the holidays. "They told me I was overqualified."

He says he never thought this could happen to him: "Everybody thinks their job is important, so like a lot of other people I thought my job was safe."

Workers with college degrees are much less likely to be unemployed, but once they lose their jobs they're no less likely than high school grads to be out of work for 99 weeks or longer. And baby boomers, like the folks shown in "Hard Times," are twice as likely as younger jobless people to stay unemployed for that long.

"There are days that I just feel like it's not even worth getting out of bed in the morning," Fromm says at one point in the film. "I actually took out the life insurance policies to see how the family would be taken care of if I were no longer here."

Arthur Delaney is the author of "A People's History of the Great Recession," HuffPost's first e-book.

Comments

[ev777]

11:54 AM on 10/13/2011

LI is a GOP stronghold. Well you get what you deserve.

[European1919]

07:17 AM on 10/13/2011

Aaah yes ... lessons in real life.

[Kenz300]

12:29 AM on 10/13/2011

The Republican party has run this country into the ground.

The party of "I've got mine and your on your own" does not believe in helping others.

They call themselves religious but seem to have missed the passage to "take care of the least among us".

[Jonathan Carr]

06:22 PM on 10/12/2011

Long Island is a perfect example of the full cycle of post-war middle class boom to 21st Century bust. The bust really started back in the 80's when defense contractor and major employer Grumman went away. This was the Grumman that built the Lunar lander for Apollo 11, the F-14, the Space Shuttles - all in Long Island. By the time Fromm become unemployed, most of the money coming into the Island is from NYC commuters fighting over a shrinking pie. I left Long Island in 1988, moved to NYC and left NYC in 1993 and now living in N. CA. I saw the writing on the wall, but most people don't want to leave their hometowns. When you are young, you can make those kinds of gambles, but for a baby boomer now - it must be pretty unbelievable.

[Philip Masiello]

03:29 PM on 10/12/2011

I feel very bad for all of the short term and long term unemployed. But why is Long Island highlighted? I am sure this same story can be told in many suburbs of cities, small towns and villages across the country. Unfortunately, until the job crisis is fixed, the economy will not get better. The fed is speaking of a double dip recession? When did we exit the first one? We need the leadership to develop a plan quickly or we will be hearing more stories like this.

[Christopher Walker]

05:17 PM on 10/12/2011

Long Island was one of the birthplaces of the modern American suburb, notably Levittown being the most famous. I agree that these stories are happening all over America but I think we need to look at the crumbling of the middle class especially in places like Levittown and Long Island in general because of the historical significance it holds.

[Absolute]

05:24 PM on 10/12/2011

Why not Long Island?

[jeffnomelt]

02:23 PM on 10/12/2011

Move from Long Island

[ElectricSlim]

03:50 PM on 10/12/2011

To where? And for what?

[blammo air]

05:36 PM on 10/12/2011

Exactly - I don't think the point is that this is ONLY happening on Long Island. Philip, you're right - this story could be told in any part of the country and something needs to be done to help the unemployed. Long Island has often been looked at historically as a symbol of middle class opportunity, the very heart of the American dream. There are people who 30 years ago would have been able to enjoy a middle class life on LI -- owning a home and raising a family by working hard-- but today they can't make it through no fault of their own.

It's like the HBO doc "The Last Truck: Closing of a G.M. Plant" - those workers in Ohio weren't the only people in the automobile industry to struggle with their plant closing but they were symbolic of the destruction of American manufacturing and industry. Focusing in on one area as a symbol of a larger issue makes it easier to see the human consequences firsthand and hopefully inspire people, including the leadership, to stand up and demand change.