Steve Steurer framed both letters and hung them on his office wall as a "reality check."
The first one, signed on Oct. 2, 1991, by the Maryland schools superintendent - then as now, Nancy S. Grasmick - regretfully informed him that he was being let go. Steurer was one of the 1,766 state employees who were targeted for layoffs as a recession - then as now - plunged the state budget into deficit.
But it is perhaps the second letter, dated Oct. 23, 1991, that is particularly instructive, as seemingly every day, both the public and private sectors unload more and more employees. The second letter says he is being reinstated.
What happened in the 11 days between the two letters was a remarkable, and successful, effort by a group of workers who didn't accept that layoffs were inevitable and saved their jobs.
"We were told there's going to be a cut, that's it," Steurer said.
But is it, then or now? I don't think every layoff can be prevented, particularly today as the economy seems to be in some sort of frightening and endless free fall. But as employers can't seem to fire their workers fast enough, I wonder if there isn't some sort of contagion, some sort of panic that is fueling these huge job losses, and if anyone is even taking a moment to think of possible alternatives.
I remember a friend telling me about a newspaper she worked for in Pennsylvania once, where it was something of a point of pride that during the Great Depression, the owners managed not to fire a single employee. Maybe those days are gone forever.
Steurer, now 64, was academic coordinator for Maryland's prison education program, which was going to be eliminated by Gov. William Donald Schaefer as he sought to close a $450 million budget deficit.
Looking at the stories The Sun wrote then, I was struck by how with just a few changes here and there they could almost run in today's paper. Then, it was companies like the long-gone USF&G and Maryland National Bank announcing layoffs; today it's Legg Mason (appropriately enough, headquartered in the old USF&G building) and Bank of America (which merged with the bank that swallowed up MNB) that are among the endless stream of companies that have been laying off staff.
Then, it was Schaefer mournfully conceding that cutbacks in services could turn back the state's recent progress; today it's Gov. Martin O'Malley saying he can't sugarcoat what will be some painful reductions. While the federal economic stimulus plan could end up changing the grim prognosis, he recently raised the prospect of laying off 700 state employees as part of a plan to make up a $2 billion budget shortfall.
