ST. PETERSBURG - After four months of unemployment, Tom Mathews' gray hair is beginning to brush his shirt collar. His 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix, bought when work was steady, is parked on a carport with its gas tank nearly empty and the repo man on the way. And Mathews expects to hear soon from his landlord as yet one more month's rent on his mobile home lot goes unpaid.
With his savings gone, credit cards maxed out and no job offers, Mathews has all but run out of hope.
"I feel like I've been pounded down so far into the ground, I'm never going to be able to crawl out of that hole," he said.
The only good news is that Mathews, 61, is just eight months away from being able to collect Social Security. The bad news is, he doesn't know how he's going to make it that long.
Mathews is a high school graduate who managed to parlay a commercial driver's license into a lifetime of work paying just enough to get by. But since his last job, which paid $10 an hour, ended in November, he's having trouble scraping together enough change to buy food for his cat, a lazy tabby named Mikey.
"I've probably put in 50 job applications," Mathews said, leaning against the kitchen sink in his tidy but worn mobile home. "There were so many jobs I just knew I had. Then a week later, they'd be back in the newspaper again."
As dreary unemployment reports continue, Mathews reflects a substantial portion of the jobless: older blue-collar workers with limited skills and less than perfect work records.
Mathews isn't pretending he's a saint. He spins stories like a guy who's used to kicking back with a cigarette and a beer. Sucking up to the boss isn't his style. And the thick-headedness of the human race constantly has him slapping his forehead and saying, "Well, duh-huh!"
He seems stunned by the difficulty in finding honest work at a decent wage.
"I've even applied for warehouse work, simple stuff that doesn't take an IQ," Mathews said. "And I've registered with temp services, but nobody has anything."
Mathews pulls out a well-thumbed folder which holds an award he received while working as a supervisor with the state Department of Transportation until 1998. There's a referral letter from his boss saying he would rehire Mathews if a position opened. His pitch to employers is simple: Give him a truck and a route and he'll get the product delivered in record time.
"I can get your goods anywhere in Florida fast, not by speeding but because I know all the shortcuts," Mathews wrote on a recent job application. He hasn't gotten a reply.
Mathews' financial situation is particularly strained because he was denied unemployment benefits. The state's denial was based on separate phone interviews with Mathews and his former employer, Candido Meana, owner of Electro Battery Inc. in St. Petersburg.
Mathews had worked for Meana for nearly four years, hauling batteries to stores and mechanics' garages from Gainesville to Sebring to North Port. He traveled up to 2,000 miles a week, averaging 30 hours a week on the job. He never missed a day until Nov. 20, when he took off to be interviewed for an airport security job in Tampa.
"I wanted to get a nighttime job, but they only interviewed during the day," Mathews said.
About 6,000 people applied for the screening positions; Mathews never got a call back.
Mathews said he alerted his boss ahead of time that he needed the day off. Meana said his driver left him in the lurch by calling the night before with the news. Meana ended up having to do the run himself, getting a flat tire in the process.
The next day he called Mathews in to discuss his absence.
"He started using profane language and I don't agree with that," said Meana, who told Mathews to turn over his keys and leave. "If he blows up with me like this, language-wise, how do I know he won't do it with my customers? I just don't take that."
Mathews, while not denying Meana's description of the event, said, "Does he have any documentation of this? This is a family-owned operation and he can say anything he wants to say. In a larger corporation, there would be records of reprimands. But I had a clean work record. I'd never taken a day off in four years. That's not exactly someone who's going to jeopardize their work record."
Based on its phone interviews, the state sided with Meana, notifying Mathews that he had been denied $186 in weekly benefits because he had been discharged for willfully demonstrating "a poor attitude."
Mathews appealed the decision, asking to defend himself against the accusations.
"The word "attitude' is a term open to interpretation," he said in his appeal to the state. "My basis of protest is that there is no presentation of facts."
He faxed his appeal request March 10. As of Friday, he had not received a response or notice of an appeal hearing. After learning that the state closed the Tampa appeals office, moving all cases to Tallahassee, Mathews thinks it unlikely his case will be reviewed before he is evicted and his car repossessed.
In the meantime, as required by law, Mathews calls the state employment office every two weeks, assuring them he's looking for work. The automated service always responds, in a flat, computerized voice, something that Mathews knows all too well: "No checks have been issued on this account."
"If the state would just release that money, those checks would give me a chance to maintain what I have and look for work at the same time," he said. "I can't wait another two or three months. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?"
