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Still, none of that helped Luttrell get a call back from a coal mine. Instead, she accepted what Michael Bernick, former director of California's Employment Development Department,

calls a lifeboat job. “Get whatever job you can,” Bernick advises laid-off workers. “You're helped by the immediate income, and you're always more attractive to employers if

you're working.” Luttrell's lifeboat was a job as a $10-an-hour dietary aide at a local hospital — earning her far less than her $17.35-an-hour wage at Whirlpool. After five years

at the hospital, she took an $11.50-an-hour job at a Walmart deli and bakery. Because she was earning so little, she and her husband were forced to file for bankruptcy. "I came home

from work one day and sat on the couch and cried,” she recalls. That's when the couple decided it was time for her to try again to use her heavy-equipment training. They discovered that

the logistics company her husband had retired from was hiring, and she got a job there as a forklift operator. Luttrell loves her new position, even though she still makes $1.35 an hour

less than she did at Whirlpool 10 years ago. "I applied to every coal mine within 100 miles. I didn't hear from any of them. But there were some men in their 20s in my class. They

didn't even finish the class because the coal mines swept them up so fast." — Marsha Luttrell Another Whirlpool worker who took a lifeboat job is Michael “Billie” Strickland. Now

57, he pursued training in industrial maintenance, a highly skilled specialty that involves repairing, maintaining and modifying elaborate factory machinery. When Whirlpool laid him off, it

was an especially difficult time for his family — his wife was disabled due to a severe back ailment, and his oldest daughter and her two kids had moved in with them. “There was a lot of

scraping, clawing, but we made it through,” he says. At an Ivy Tech jobs fair, he learned that a factory in town, Pittsburgh Glass Works, had a large industrial-maintenance crew, so he

applied there. At the time, however, the factory had no openings in that field. So, in a sizable step backward, Strickland took a $13-an-hour production job at Pittsburgh Glass Works that

was far below his $18-an-hour Whirlpool wage. After six months, Strickland got a break: An industrial-maintenance job opened up. He transferred into that department, and his pay jumped to

$19 an hour. After nearly seven years in industrial maintenance, he was earning $26 an hour (about $54,000 annually), 44 per-cent more than his wages at Whirlpool. But a few months ago he

received some bad news. In late May, Pittsburgh Glass Works announced it would close its Evansville plant at the end of December and lay off about 360 workers. Having rebounded from a layoff

once before, Strickland is optimistic. “I can sell myself with things I've learned,” he notes. “I've got valuable skills." READY FOR CHANGE After the Whirlpool factory

closed, some workers found themselves unexpectedly retired. For Nick Pope, this was no great hardship. A quality-control auditor who had worked at Whirlpool for 44 years, he was 62 when the

plant closed, and he didn't find another job he liked. He is now happily retired, helped by his union pension of nearly $2,000 a month, plus Social Security. “I'm comfortable.

We're doing good,” he says, pointing out that his wife recently retired from Bristol Myers Squibb. “We've got three kids and eight grandkids. They keep me busy." Jean

Mayberry, on the other hand, was just 52 when the plant closed and is more of an involuntary retiree. “I was too young to retire and too old to find a job,” she says. After losing her

assembly-line job — she had helped to make refrigerator doors — she studied for an associate's degree in business administration and “applied to 75 different places,” everything from

banks to TV stations. She rarely heard back. Finally, she landed a low-level position with a bank in Evansville, for just $10 an hour, $8 an hour less than she had been making at Whirlpool.

“It was a drastic pay cut,” she adds. She quit after a year, bored with the job and dismayed with the low pay. Pessimistic about finding another spot, Mayberry retired; she lives on Social

Security plus $1,500 a month from her pension and her ex-husband's pension. She'd like to have worked longer, but she has one consolation: She gets to spend lots of time with her

seven grandchildren. Tamra Bottoms, who was 51 when she was laid off from her production-coordinator position, took a different tack. She studied for a “hot” field: power plant operations.

When she finished her associate's degree, she applied for dozens of jobs, but nothing came through. “I was either overqualified or they would tell me they'd find someone more

qualified,” she says. One day Bottoms saw that a craft brewery was looking for someone to manage its operations. She applied for and landed the job. She enjoyed “every single minute” of her

five years there, she notes. She didn't like the pay, though: $10 an hour, plus whatever tips she could hustle by, for instance, giving tours of the brewery. The total was well below

her $17.33-an-hour Whirlpool wage. “I found out that many people see an associate degree as nothing more than a glorified high school diploma,” she explains. “It wasn't enough. I felt I

had to go further.” She took a slew of online courses while working at the brewery. Wanting a job that helped others, she quit to work at Easterseals Rehabilitation Center and later for the

Indiana state government, where she, until recently, helped low-income workers find childcare so they could keep their jobs. “The people I served are the people busting their tails right

now,” says Bottoms. “They are the essential workers.” Laid off from that position in the spring, she accepted a job in a local hospital's access and logistics department. Decades ago,

Bottoms had turned down a college scholarship after high school and gone straight to Whirlpool because of its good wages. After getting laid off, she became serious about studying, earning a

bachelor's degree and then two master's degrees — in nonprofit management and strategic management. Her advice for those who confront a sudden layoff after age 50: “You change.

You have to or you won't succeed. You have to be a chameleon. You have to absorb your surroundings and learn to adjust." KYLE GRANTHAM / Courier & Press 10 YEARS LATER: A

SHOCK, THEN A CALL TO ACTION The refrigerator factory in Evansville, Indiana, was long a source of solid union jobs. When the plant closed, older laid-off workers faced a particular

challenge: how to earn a living without starting over from scratch. Here's how six of them did it. TAMRA BOTTOMS, 62 Her layoff spurred her to earn two master’s degrees. THEN: 

Production coordinator NOW: Hospital staffer NICK POPE, 72 His pension made him a better offer. THEN: Quality-control auditor NOW: Retiree JEAN MAYBERRY, 63 She retrained and landed work,

then chose to resign. THEN: Refrigerator-door assembler NOW: Retiree MARSHA LUTTRELL, 57 It took lots of persistence to find the right post. THEN: Refrigerator-parts assembler NOW: Forklift

operator TYRONE GARNETT, 54 His versatility at Whirlpool was a selling point later. THEN: Excess head operator NOW: Production technician at a wheel manufacturer KATHY DUNCAN, 62 She helps

others make it through tough times. THEN: Ice-maker assembler NOW: Foreclosure-prevention housing counselor _Labor writer Steven Greenhouse is the author of _Beaten Down, Worked Up: The

Past, Present, and Future of American Labor_._