Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 20, 1993 TAG: 9301200014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUGSPUR LENGTH: Medium
COUPLE'S JOY LESSENED BY LAYOFFS
Life was great for Joe and Maude Barker last spring when they learned their first child was due in January.Both had jobs at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant and together were earning more than $50,000 a year.
They figured a new baby would be a great way to start 1993.
Little did they know that before their daughter was born Jan. 12, both would lose their jobs and they would see their income shrink from more than $1,000 a week to about $400 - the amount of two unemployment checks.
Though she's been on vacation since giving birth last week, today is Maude Barker's last day on the arsenal payroll.
She is joined in the ranks of the unemployed by 729 other arsenal workers who also will work their last shift at the propellant plant today.
It's the arsenal's largest job cut since shortly after U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1974.
Joe Barker lost his maintenance mechanic job in August.
The Barkers are victims of a massive cost-cutting plan that has forced Hercules Inc. to lay off about 1,300 workers at the Radford plant in the past two years.
The arsenal will be left with about 2,000 workers, compared to about 4,500 in 1989.
Joe and Maude Barker met at the arsenal. Since they married three years ago, they have made the 104-mile round trip each work day from their Carroll County home to the arsenal.
The couple will always have bittersweet memories about the date Jan. 20. Bitter because Maude Barker lost her job, but sweet because it's Joe Barker's 34th birthday and the initial due date for their baby.
Nestling nine-pound Emily Elizabeth against her bosom, Maude Barker, 33, huddled with her husband Monday and talked about the struggle the couple faces trying to provide for the infant when neither parent has a job.
Diapers, baby food, new clothes . . . none of it comes cheap.
On top of that, Maude Barker has two teen-age sons from a previous marriage who also live with the couple.
"There's going to be sacrifices. It's a lot harder looking out for four than five," Joe Barker said. "When you got a little 'un, that baby has to come first. Maude and I can do without. We won't buy anything we don't actually need."
One example is the home's water pressure tank that's wearing out and has a hole in the side. Before he was laid off, Joe Barker would have bought a new tank and installed it without a second thought.
Now all he can do is patch the hole and hope the pump holds out.
"I'll just have to make do with this old one till we can find the money to get a new one," he said.
Despite the family's financial misfortune, Emily's birth has spirits riding high in the Barker home.
"You've got to play the cards you have been dealt," Joe Barker said. "If you've got a bad hand then you don't bet a lot."
Many arsenal workers losing their jobs will take advantage of a federal program and return to school, but both Barkers are determined to find a job without any retraining.
"I don't know what I would study if I went back to school," Joe Barker said. "Besides, there are a lot of college graduates out of work."
The problem is that manufacturing jobs - the type with health and retirement benefits and a paycheck large enough to support a family - are scarce in Western Virginia.
"It's very bleak," said Rick Hagy, director of the federally funded Highlands Job Placement office in Pulaski. "There is no major hiring . . . There are a lot of service-type of jobs, but even those aren't full time."
But Barker keeps trying, even though many companies he visits aren't even accepting employment applications, much less hiring new workers.
"The bottom line is that I have got to have a job," he said. "This laying around ain't going to cut it."