Background and Purpose
The economic, social, and psychological costs of worker displacement is an issue of critical scope and national significance. From 1991 to 1993 over 9 million workers lost their jobs due to work site closings, plant relocation or slack work (US Department of labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1994), while in 1994 alone, 3% of the civilian labor force (3.8 million persons) lost their jobs for these same reasons (US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1995). Families in rural communities are especially vulnerable as they are more likely to be unemployed, earn lower real wages, pay a higher proportion of income for rental housing, and have less access to health and intervention services (Children’s Defense Fund, 1991). Displaced workers experience heightened feelings of anxiety, depression, emotional distress and hopelessness about the future (Brenner & Starrin, 1988; Dooley, Catalano & Wilson, 1994; Hamilton, Hoffman, Broman & Rauma, 1993; Iversen & Sabroe, 1988; Leana & Feldman, 1992; Liem & Liem, 1988), increases in somatic symptoms and physical illness (Hamilton, Broman, Hoffman, & Renner, 1990; Kessler, House & Turner, 1897; Liem & Liem, 1988), compromised immune system functioning (Brenner & Starrin, 1988), lowered self-esteem and self-confidence (Ware, Jackson & Banks, 1988), and increased hostility and dissatisfaction with interpersonal relationships (Buss & Redburn, 1983; Liem & Liem, 1988). These findings are highly robust and generalize across nations, time periods, white and blue collar workers, and males and females. Job loss has also been linked to alcohol and substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and higher rates of clinically significant psychiatric disorder (Buss & Redburn, 1983; Dooley, Catalano, & Rook, 1988; Kessler, Turner & House, 1987), although problems in these areas are less consistently found than with the aforementioned indices of emotional strain and ill health. While most research has focused on the consequences of unemployment as it relates to the health and well-being of the displaced worker, the family is no less affected. Most evidence suggests that both spouses and children are at risk for negative outcomes that parallel those experienced by the displaced worker.

What has been even less explored are the ways in which families can serve as a support system to mitigate the effects of catastrophic economic change. Specifically, family resiliency, or the ways families use personal, collective, and community resources to successfully cope with unemployment, has been less well documented than family vulnerability to economic loss. Data on adaptation in ethnic minority families are especially scant. This is unfortunate, as minority groups constitute 25% of the US population, represent a growing proportion of the nation’s citizenry, and are disproportionately affected by unemployment (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1994; US Commerce, 1993).

Hawaii is not immune to the problems of unemployment and is, arguably, more vulnerable because of its island economy. For over a century, the sugar and pineapple industries dominated the economy, landscape, lifestyle and social infrastructure of the islands. More recently, global markets and changing federal policy regarding supports to the sugar industry have placed these enterprises in financial jeopardy. Employment in Hawaiian sugar production decreased 20% between 1990-93 and by an additional 50% in 1994-95 (Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, 1995). Hawaii’s population, in which a majority of the people are non-Caucasians, and rural plantation communities provide a natural laboratory to study how ethnic minority families adapt to occupational loss.

The goals of our study were to add to the knowledge base on family coping patterns in the face of occupational loss and to assess the usefulness of formal services provided to assist families during unemployment. The objectives of the project were:

1. To describe the extent of economic, personal, and familial changes associated with job loss, with a focus on Asian and Pacific Islander families.
2. To identify personal and family resiliency factors which serve as protective mechanisms during periods of job loss.
3. To identify vulnerability factors that heighten personal and family susceptibility to the detrimental effects of job loss.
4. To assess the formal community services and benefits available to plantation families at the time of job loss.

Subjects and Procedures
During the initial phase of the project, the assistance of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), Big Island sugar companies, and Hawaii Island Catholic Social Ministry, a social services agency, was enlisted. Community meetings were held to promote the project and respond to any concerns.

Structured interviews were conducted with 126 families (126 women, 124 men, and 55 youth). All of the men and 7 of the women were current or former unionized employees of one of three sugar companies on the island of Hawaii. Overall, the sample could be described as working class, Asian Pacific Islander Americans.

The interviews were held one-on-one with trained community interviewers and were approximately two hours long. The interviews covered the following topics: demographic characteristics; financial resources; personal values; coping strategies; family relationships; community supports; mental health and behavioral adjustment; community service use and satisfaction; marital interaction; and family coping specific to the job loss event. After the interviews were completed, family members were brought together for a 20-minute videotaped discussion of issues related to the work site closings, including advice they wished to share with other families facing job loss, and their visions for the future of their communities. Each child’s English or Social Studies teacher was asked to respond to a questionnaire concerning the youth’s behavior, academic, and prosocial skills. Data were also collected from participant’s medical records and children’s school files.

To complement the interview data, oral histories were collected from 10 families, including grandparents. The interviews averaged 90 minutes in length and consisted of discussions on issues such as plantation life, ethnic relations, technological and social change, job loss, coping financially, emotionally, and socially, and the future of families and communities.

Result
The extensive pool of quantitative and qualitative data are broadly grouped by the following general statements of findings:

1. The plantation closings had negative consequences for family employment patterns, financial well-being, and mental health.

Continued unemployment was a problem for a sizable minority of former plantation families.

For the displaced workers, the average time interval between their lay-off and interview dates was 15 months. At the time of the interviews, the majority of both men (59%) and women (64%) were working. However, a sizable minority of men (35%) and women (7%) were still unemployed and seeking work. The remaining adults (6% of men, 32% of women) had left the work force, or were home makers.

Displaced workers who found new jobs did not experience an overall decline in occupational prestige; as many re-employed workers experienced a rise in occupational status as experienced a decline. However, anecdotal evidence suggest that many of these new jobs were temporary or seasonal in nature.

Demographic characteristics such as age, former plantation job grade and education were largely unrelated to the likelihood of re-employment. Re-employment was best predicted by the family’s use of proactive coping strategies.

Although three-quarters of the displaced workers made use of state-sponsored job training services, use of these services did not increase the worker’s chances of finding a new job. There was some evidence that the use of job training services may have helped men obtain higher status jobs. However, the advantage associated with the use of job training disappeared when occupational status at the former plantation job was controlled.

Most families suffered economic decline as a result of the plantation closings.

Mean reported family income from all sources for the past year reflected a working class level in pay. The average reported total income was $31,671, and per capita income was $8,271. These figures should be considered in light of Hawai`i’s high cost of living. Family income for the sample was 75% of the state median; because families were large, per capita income was only 36% of the state median.

The relative change in family economic well-being was more psychologically salient than absolute levels. Over 70% of families reported that family income had dropped considerably in the past year and over 50% reported a notable decline in the family’s standard of living.

Families reported difficulty paying bills, affording transportation, health care, and even food and clothing. Families engaged in a variety of prudent and imprudent money saving strategies including delaying purchases, reducing household spending, reducing insurance coverage, not paying bills, bartering, delaying medical care, hunting, fishing and gardening.

Symptoms of psychological distress and poor mental health were pervasive. Mental health problems were related to the family’s level of financial strain, but re-employment did not automatically improve psychological well-being.

One of the most striking findings was the high level of psychological distress reported by participants. Twenty-five percent of men and 19% of women reported elevated symptoms of depression, anxiety, hostility and/or somatic complaints. Thirty-four percent of the mothers reported elevated levels of problem behavior in their children and 16% of teachers reported behavior problems. Youth internalizing symptoms (depression, anxiety, withdrawal, somatic complaints) were more than twice as common as youth externalizing symptoms (aggression, antisocial behavior, oppositionality). Self-reported drug and alcohol use was relatively low for both adults and youth.

Adult mental health status was inversely related to family financial well-being. As objective and subjective measures of financial strain increased, so did symptoms of poor mental health. Men were more sensitive to financial difficulties than were women. Children’s mental health, however, was not directly affected by family financial status.

Mental health and substance use for both men and women were not related to current employment status. In other words, finding a new job (or one’s spouse finding a job) did not reverse the negative mental health effects of previously experienced financial strain. There was evidence that re-employment introduced new stressors for many families. Driving times from our plantation communities to areas where most new jobs were located ranged from 1.5 to 4 hours, round-trip. Families keenly felt the effects of severely reduced shared time and reported that parent-child relationships were particularly disrupted. In addition, the continued economic and psychological strains experienced throughout the community had repercussions even for those families who were faring well economically. Concern for kin, friends and neighbors who had not found new employment weighed on the minds of families who had.

Effects of job loss on physical health and school performance were small.

Occupational loss had only a minimal effect on physical health. Women from families that had experienced a lay-off made an average of 27% more health care visits in the post lay-off year. Current adult employment status was not related to any other health indices for men, women or youth.

A comparison of children’s school performance and behavior before and after the plantation closings showed no change in grades, test scores or discipline contacts. Absenteeism, however, increased by 60%.

2. Each family member’s coping style affects his or her resilience.

Personal coping strategies had an important impact on personal well-being

Passive-avoidant coping was a vulnerability factor for both men and women. Men’s mental health suffered if passive-avoidant coping was a preferred response strategy. Women’s mental health suffered if passive-avoidant coping was combined specifically with high levels of financial strain. Under conditions of high financial strain, men’s emotion-focused coping and tendency to seek formal sources of social support served as resiliency factors, buffering them from poor mental health.

Youth were even more strongly affected by personal coping responses than were their parents. Active, constructive coping was associated with better prosocial and school adjustment. Passive-destructive coping was associated with poor prosocial adjustment and increased delinquency. These results are of particular merit, since prior research on family job loss has not considered the role of youth coping.

Family members spoke at length about the importance of coping with their emotions. Families urged others not to dwell on their difficulties and to maintain a positive outlook through the use of cognitive reframing, re-evaluation of priorities, reliance on spiritual beliefs, and finding ways to turn the crisis into an opportunity for personal growth and healthy change.

3. Family functioning affects resiliency: family emotional climate, collective coping, and parenting are important.

Family characteristics--specifically, family problem-solving quality, family coping strategies, marital quality, family rules and rituals, and parenting practices--were important in protecting family members’ psychological well-being.

Several family characteristics served as resiliency factors. Dyadic problem-solving was the strongest resiliency factor identified for both men and women. When partners were able to have frank, calm discussions in which a variety of solutions were proposed and evaluated, mental health (and for women, physical health) was protected. The protective effect of problem-solving skill was especially pronounced for families with the most severe financial problems.

Other family resiliency factors had gender-specific effects. Men’s happiness with the marital relationship protected them from mental health problems. Women were buffered by a family climate in which daily rules and expectations were clear and holidays and other special events were routinely celebrated.

Men’s mental health was also enhanced by the way their family as a unit coped with the lay-offs. Family self-help and family planfulness were associated with better mental health of men whose families reported high financial strain. The beneficial strategy of family self-help included group efforts to provide each other with emotional and instrumental assistance, taking direct action to improve their problems, and taking time to relax and share enjoyable activities. Family planfulness included contingency planning, logical problem-solving and proactive efforts made in advance of the closing date.

The advice given by families in the video discussion section of the home interview corresponds closely with these empirical results. Family was seen as the most important source of inner strength and family members were urged to be open in their expressions of affection, loyalty and noncritical emotional support. Frank, open communication among all family members was also seen as essential. Parents were encouraged to be open with their children about financial problems and children were encouraged to be active in helping the family deal with the situation. Making time for recreation, social activities, and just relaxing were seen as ways to reduce stress and maintain positive family and personal relationships.

Youth adjustment was responsive to parenting practices. Authoritative parenting is a pattern that includes inductive discipline (disciplining via reasoning and explanation), monitoring the child’s activities and whereabouts, being affectionate and loving, expressing one’s esteem for the child, and providing positive feedback and rewards to appropriate behavior. Harsh discipline included punishment that was inconsistent, emotional or severe. Authoritative parents had children who excelled in the areas of prosocial and school adjustment. The use of harsh discipline was associated with high rates of delinquent activities.

Conversely, family dysfunction increased the likelihood of individual psychological distress.

Partner maladjustment affected both men and women. Women’s poor mental health had a negative influence on their partner’s psychological adjustment while men’s poor mental health was associated with women’s poor physical health. Partner substance use was a vulnerability factor for substance use in both genders.

4. A positive community climate and community-based services help families.

Community climate and social support were important resiliency factors.

Overall, a supportive community was an asset that enhanced family resiliency. Men, youth, and to a lesser extent, women, were buffered from negative outcomes by a positive community climate as defined by perceptions of community cohesiveness, spirit, safety, and infrastructure adequacy.

Youth adjustment was even more closely linked with community factors. A positive community climate was associated with fewer delinquent activities, explaining an impressive 31% of the variance in delinquency. The protective effect of community climate was most pronounced for youth suffering from the highest levels of financial strain. Social network support emerged as one of the most robust resiliency factors for youth in the entire study. Social network support enhanced youth prosocial and school adjustment, and reduced the likelihood of delinquent activity.

When services were aggressively promoted, families were frequent and satisfied users who derived demonstrable benefits in terms of psychological well-being.

Community-based services such as health, income support and family counseling had a positive impact on individual well-being. Using a broad variety of available services served to improve men’s mental health, while being satisfied with the quality of services received had a buffering effect for women’s mental health Both broad use and satisfaction improved women’s physical health, but only under conditions of high financial strain.

There was extremely high desire for community services of all types. Perceived service availability was also high, ranging from 70% to 98%. However, the ratio of service availability to perceived need differed considerably across communities.

Overall, families were heavy consumers of formal services, using about four different service categories per family. Families who made use of formal services described themselves as "happy" with the quality of services received. Job training, business and economic development, and family services were seen as the most effective.

The widespread use of services, particularly in the Hamakua district, was most likely due to public policy decisions made by the state and county of Hawai’i and to the fact that a major area charity engaged in prolonged door-to-door outreach.

The most common reasons for not using services were lack of need, lack of availability and lack of eligibility. Contrary to our expectations, concerns about cost, stigma, or service quality did not keep many families from making use of services.

Some room for improvement was seen in the area of service convenience, particularly the reduction of bureaucratic red tape. Disrespectful treatment was an issue for public assistance, family services and job training clients. Finally, criticism of business and economic development initiatives were particularly strong.

In the open-ended video discussions, families offered advice about the benefits accrued from using community services. Families urged others to take advantage of material resources and formal support systems. This advice also included arguments for not being ashamed to use available supports.

5. Preserving family and community strengths is a high priority for families.

The plantation closings had pervasive effects on the economic and social well-being of the community. These changes added to families’ feelings of distress.

Families felt deep bonds with their communities and spoke of the community as their ‘ohana, or extended family. The relationships between families and neighbors were imbued with ties of mutual dependence, affection, respect, and expectations that emotional and instrumental support would be freely exchanged in times of need. Community ties were seen as essential to family well-being and in need of preservation for future generations.

There was widespread concern that employment in distant locations eroded family and community ties. Specifically, there was less adult supervision of children, more idle time for youth, less contact with neighbors, and a perceived increase in risky behaviors and antisocial acts by both youth and adults. There was much fear the community solidarity was eroding.

Strong desires were expressed for new community-based employment that would preserve the ‘ohana and protect the natural environment. Small-scale businesses that offered greater control at the community level and did not alter the character of the rural places was preferred.

Implications and Dissemination

Implications for Policy and Practice
Taken as a whole, the results of the project suggest the following implications for public policy and services related to rural families and unemployment.

1. Policy makers and service providers must be made aware that job loss is a family event and that policies and practices should include some focus on the family as a unit.

The family is a highly interdependent unit in which changes to one person have repercussions throughout the family. Policies and practices that address only the needs of the displaced worker are incomplete. They overlook the widespread and significant needs of other family members. Ignoring these needs could lead to greater family distress and dysfunction which would require a higher level of and more costly intervention services in the long term.

While family members share in suffering, they also share in strength. Since the family is the key for both collective and individual resilience, policies and practices for displaced workers may be strengthened when natural sources of family support are acknowledged and used to their full advantage.

2. Services for displaced workers and their families should be in place in advance of the lay-off date and selected services should remain in place for an extended period thereafter.

When families took proactive steps in coping with the upcoming job loss, the displaced worker was significantly more successful in securing new employment and also enjoyed better psychological health. By making services available well in advance of a known lay-off date, workers and families may prepare themselves more effectively for a successful transition.

Adaptation to the changes associated with job loss is a lengthy and complex process. Services, especially those that address emotional and psychological needs, should not be seen as a short-term proposition. Supports should not be withdrawn soon after the termination, nor should it be assumed that re-employed workers and their families would no longer benefit from continued service availability.

3. Resilient families provide a natural model for prevention and intervention goals.

The skills common to resilient families--effective problem solving and coping, supportive relationships, authoritative parenting--should be used as strategies in designing prevention and intervention efforts for families who do not naturally exhibit these characteristics. Emphasis should be placed on prevention, not only because it is fiscally sound and utilizes scarce resources cost effectively, but because it is a means to reduce human pain and suffering as well.

4. Policy makers and service providers must understand the community context in which families are embedded.

Safe, supportive, cohesive communities serve as an important resiliency factor for the family. Families also benefit when they are both able to rely on and contribute to the well-being of their communities. Policies and programs should be directed at supporting and building on the informal networks that currently exist in neighborhoods and communities. The best of these programs avoid substituting for or causing the deterioration of informal support networks, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

5. Families and communities must be actively involved and their goals and values incorporated in planning economic development and service strategies.

To restore a community’s vitality, the participation of the people who live and work in the area is essential. Without their involvement and support, citizen passivity rather than activity is nurtured and successful outcomes are less likely. Economic opportunity and stability, family and community strengths, and the natural environment are all highly valued by families. The realization of only one of these can cause negative consequences in the other areas. For this reason, the pursuit of all three goals together, not independent of or at the expense of the others, can be viewed as a proactive measure to ensure the survival of healthy families and vital communities.

When control and responsibility are shared at the community level, services tend to be more compatible with the area’s cultural heritage, history, and values. Where there is trust and meaningful involvement in determining service strategies, program managers will find their outreach efforts successful. Moreover, the community will bring both financial and human capital contributions that will expand and enhance program resources.

Dissemination
Although the project funding period has only recently come to a close, the results of our study have been positively received by both professional and community audiences. Moreover, there are good indications that the project will have an impact on future State work force policies and the services provided to families facing job loss. The following summarizes the dissemination activities to date.

Policy makers. Two presentations were made to state legislators. In addition, at the request of the Director of the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, a presentation on our project and recommendations will be made to the Work Force Development Council which coordinates all employment, work force education, and training agencies in the State. The aim is to modify sections of Hawaii’s Work force Development Strategic Plan to include a family focus.

Professional Audience. Twelve presentations have been made to academic and practicing professionals, and three additional submissions have been accepted for presentation in Fall 1997. One article has been published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family and two additional research articles are under review. Other manuscripts are in development.

Community Audiences. Our project and its findings have been widely shared through channels such as: a) interviews on radio; b) articles in local and major statewide newspapers; c) reports in project newsletters and fact sheets which have been sent to various community members, including workers who were slated to lose their jobs on sugar plantations on the islands of Kauai and Oahu; and d) a community forum co-sponsored by the Mayor of Hawaii County.

In addition, a new publication entitled Overcoming Job Loss: A Family Guide has been distributed to project families, libraries, and human service agencies free of charge. It has also been purchased by business corporations, the Hawaii Department of Labor and health services organizations (to date, over 1400 copies have been purchased) for use with their respective employees or clients.

Web Site.
Information on the project, key findings, scholarly publications and order information on Overcoming Job Loss: A Family Guide can be found on the Center on the Family Web Site:
http://www2.ctahr.hawaii.edu/family/jobloss/index.html