MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Meetings with former Mylan employees and WorkForce WV wrap up Thursday afternoon, providing information about how to approach a new and unexpected frontier — unemployment.
“I’ve been out of work for the last week now,” Bruceton Mills native and former Mylan employee John Berger said. “I’m going crazy. I need a job as soon as possible. I’m not one to sit around on my hands.”
That’s part of the problem though — Berger may have priced himself out of a lot of the jobs he’s now trying to find. The 18-year veteran and diesel truck mechanic is still in the Army Reserves, but he said the pay and benefits package at Mylan were virtually unchallenged throughout the area.
“I’ve never been unemployed,” he said. “And for the last 12 years, I’ve made about 30 bucks an hour, give or take.”
That included, Berger said, reasonably well-priced health insurance through Mylan, which is where he’s worked for the past five years.
“When I go to these new interviews and tell them, ‘Hey this is what we’ve been making; this is what I live on…’ they can’t believe it,” he said. “Especially with the healthcare Mylan provided for us at the low cost they did, no one can match that.”
Berger went to work for Mylan, in part, so that he and his wife could live closer to her childhood home in Bruceton Mills. His wife, who is also employed, is 36 weeks pregnant.
“Of course there’s that panic,” he said. “When you make that money, you live at the money. Everyone can say, oh no I saved it, but really you don’t. Yeah, there’s panic and there’s worry.”
That panic becomes particularly evident when the topic turns to health insurance.
“I thought, hey, they’re laying us off,” Berger said. “Maybe they’ll give us two or three months of insurance. I didn’t expect it to be a week.”
Like their pay, health insurance with the company expires at the end of April.
“The statue that Milan Puskar put out there was, you know, we’re going to take care of you,” Berger said. “That’s what everyone believed. This was a complete and total shock to everyone.”
Especially shocking, Berger said, because the rumors floating around the work force prior to last Friday’s announcement of job cuts was something much less permanent.
“We were thinking was, ‘Hey they’re going to halt production for a couple of weeks, knock out these new training sessions for the supervisors, and then they’re going to come train us,'” he said. “It was a complete shock with the 400 union employees that was laid off.”
Now, upwards of 500 former employees are learning from WorkForce WV how to file unemployment online, what their health care options are, and how best to market themselves and their skill sets as they move to the next stage of their lives.
Those who missed the meeting can contact their local WorkForce WV office for additional information.