Frederica Freyberg:
We finish tonight's program by going from the environment to the economy. Next week marks the one year closing of the GM plant in Janesville. Our next guest is a former GM employee who works as a training specialist with the Rock County Job Center. He says 90 percent of his clients once worked for GM. Ed Martinez joins us by telephone from Janesville. Mr. Martinez, thank you very much for joining us.

Ed Martinez:
Sure.

Frederica Freyberg:
It was a year ago Christmas that GM closed. What has this year been like for those displaced workers?

Ed Martinez:
It's really been different. It's a lot different things have been happening for the people from General Motors and the people in surrounding communities, along with the retirees here in Janesville, due to the closure of General Motors. We've had quite a few people that have gone on to retirement, some people that have actually walked away from General Motors and started doing things other than manufacturing. For the most course, a lot of people are going in to a supportive field and doing a lot of training right now.

Frederica Freyberg:
And when you say supportive field, what do you mean?

Ed Martinez:
We have a lot of people right now that are in training, that are either into the heating-air conditioning, or different avenues, such as the medical field, medical assistants, radiology, CNAs, all different types of training that is actually going to be more of a support group rather than a production group. Of what's taking place. A lot of the manufacturing has, the bulk of the manufacturing has moved on with the General Motors plant and the surrounding plants that supported it. So a lot of people and clients are going ahead and taking and being retrained.

Frederica Freyberg:
So would you say by and large that as opposed to being able to find a job in this economy, that most of these people that were displaced either at GM or any of the businesses that supported GM are actually in school or training?

Ed Martinez:
Well, there's a good percentage, a very large percentage that are in retraining. They're either taking classes at Blackhawk Technical College or some of the other surrounding technical colleges. Now we do have a group of people that unfortunately had to leave the area and take transfers to other General Motors facilities, to continue supporting their families and keeping with the way that they've been going with GM and wanting to go ahead and try to finish a career with General Motors. On the other part of it, we've had a large portion of the General Motor workers that have moved on into retirement with either having a full retirement or a special attrition packages that were offered to them, and they went ahead and took those, and went on to taking either some classes or some readjustments to be able to work in a different field in the capacity of learning some digital experiences such as computer training and things of that sort.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what is the mood like in south-central Wisconsin, is there the sense yet that things are picking up?

Ed Martinez:
Actually, there is a very large sense, when you go out to Blackhawk Technical College, you can see there's a 43 percent increase in enrollment, and the fear of having to go back to school with a bunch of kids is gone, because the majority of students that are at that college are adults. Some of the people I used to work with, ranging from the age of 60 to 35.

Frederica Freyberg:
And the mood coming in to kind of the one year anniversary of this?

Ed Martinez:
Actually, the mood isn't as bad as what most people would think. There is an unfortunate, it's very unfortunate what took place. A lot of decisions have to be made, a lot of families are split up right now because one or two of the people from that family have transferred and try to drive home every weekend to be with their families. So in that part, it does give a little bit of a harder mood, a little harder to keep up with life, trying to catch up on the weekends. And then the other part, maybe people that have made some decisions that haven't panned out, maybe the way they wanted them that, got retrained, and found out that if I really want to go to work right now and I'm job ready, there are some people that took transfers on their own to relocate to other states, where the work was.

Frederica Freyberg:
Yeah. Very difficult decisions all around. Ed Martinez, we thank you, and thank you for the work you are doing in Janesville.