We got hit hard yesterday

[lynne b]

I have worked at the same place for going on 21 yrs it's a metal stamping factory. It's never been this bad before, we have had just a couple small lay offs, shut down for the weeks of holidays, 4 day work weeks but it has never been this bad before. They laid off around 35 people at Christmas time, yesterday they laid off more not sure how many, they cut out 3rd shift, cut some wages, are forcing some retierments, and even let some salary people go, we are shut down all next week and can expect more shut downs over the next few months. They said it's possible the 1st group of people may not all get called back. We only have around 300 or less people employed there its been hard to tell because they have let some go for various reasons over the past few months. We do have a facitlity in Jaurez Mexico and a heat treat facility and metal facitlity here in our town and they have been cut back to bare minimum. I have to go back to my old job driving the fork truck which means a pay raise, thing is it's in our main building and i am not sure i can do the job, i am almost 50 yrs old, i weigh less than 100 lbs, that metal gets very heavy to move or dump scrap, i have never done this job in this building only in the assembly side for many years and that was not as hard or heavy, i am afraid that if i can't do the job this time they will let me go , now the people i will be working for are great people mostly men and i have no dought they will help me but they have thier own jobs to worry about and i don't want to jepordize their job's. I am getting to old for this type of work, i just wanted to have a nice assembly job for the rest of my time there, it's been a couple of years since i have done this job and i have gotten lazy and out of shape. I am not complaining i am thankful i still have a job and a pay raise on top of it, i am just worried i can't do it anymore. Pluse i am taking care of my mom at the NH which some of you know really stress's me out. Maybe some day i will have some good news to post about on here seems all i ever have is bad news