Waiting in the Long Gray Lines

The fast-growing South escaped many of the ill effects of past postwar recessions, but the current slump is so pervasive even that region is hurting. Unemployment in the six Southeastern states in December ran three-tenths of a point above the national average. In Georgia, officials of the state department of labor estimated that unemployment there had jumped from 9% for the month of January to 11% or 12% by last week. Unemployment lines in Georgia are much the same as elsewhere in the U.S. People who wish to collect unemployment compensation have to sign up at state offices. The lines are long and quiet. They are also exercises in learning how to wait. Last week Atlanta Bureau Chief James Bell visited a job insurance office of the Georgia department of labor, stood in line and talked with Southerners who in many cases are seeing the inside of an unemployment office for the first time. His report:

Tuesday. 7:45 a.m. A soft rain falls on the small crowd waiting to get inside 142 Marietta Street, one of four Atlanta job insurance offices of the Georgia department of labor. There is not much to do except try to keep dry. At 8 a.m. the door is unlocked, and the crowd enters in an orderly manner. The ground-floor room is cavernous, a styleless box with a checkered floor and long counters across the far end. Within an hour, 300 people are queued more or less neatly in six lines at the counters.

Above them on one wall hangs a clock with a red sweep second hand. It is the most looked-at object in the room, the beginning and end of an eye-sweep pattern that pans your feet, the head of your line, the head of the line next to yours and damp new arrivals. The clock is the silent monitor of how long it is taking everybody to do one basic thing: to move from the rear of a 150-ft. line to the front, then out of the building or to still another line. There is no "average" time of waiting, but hardly anyone gets in and out in less than an hour.

The crowd is docile, about half black and half white, a group of refugees with the common bond of having been bombed out of a job. They are a mixture of "good ole boys" with beer bellies bulging over the belts of their double-knit slacks, trim women in stylish pantsuits and fur jackets, and young managers and technicians in three-button, charcoal gray suits. The newcomers, skittish and self-conscious at first, soon relax as they sense that they are not alone. Hardly anyone reads to kill time. Conversation is minimal and muted. Children accompanying their parents are subdued. Veteran standers-in-line are spotted easily: every few minutes they squat and flex their knees to relieve the physical and mental strain. Scuffles and raised voices are rare, but they have happened when someone tries to jump the line. "Sometimes a lady will faint," says Bill Peters, 34, the office manager, "but in all my time here [18 months], I've seen only one punch thrown."

Some of the uninitiated show a certain shame and try to blend in with the scenery. For the newcomer, the goal is applying for unemployment compensation and receiving a little blue book in which all his dealings with the department--including a record of each visit --will be noted. R.L. ("Lee") Chastain, 40, a short, wiry-haired interior decorator who was thrown out of work three months ago because of the depression in the construction industry, spent 2 hr. 45 min. in two lines. One line was for picking up the blue book and application form; the other was for turning in the completed form for follow-up verification by labor department officials, a necessary step before his weekly unemployment checks could begin arriving in the mail. The civility of the civil servants was one reason for the long wait. Chastain himself had few questions, but others in the lines had many, and agency workers offered thorough answers, courteously delivered. It's a place where everybody is "sir" or "ma'am." Says Peters: "Everybody is polite to everybody else."

In most cases, jobless benefits begin flowing within a week to ten days after applications are approved. Two weeks ago, Georgia state officials mailed a record 103,000 checks, averaging $55 each per recipient.* But there are personal and bureaucratic foulups. Curtis Clayton, 26, a jobless plasterer, was on his fourth visit to the office after mistakes and delays by him and the agency; he happily learned that his first check would be arriving soon. Pauline H. Sharp, 25, a practical nurse, had returned to the lines five times to find out why her checks had stopped coming. Her daughter Larsha, 4, stood near by. playing with her pigtails. After two hours of waiting, she finally got the good news: her benefits would be resumed. A change of address had caused the interruption.

By 4:30 p.m., the checkered floor is littered with cigarette butts. The lines still stretch to the rear of the room, but the doors are locked, and no more people are allowed in. It is 6:30 p.m. before everybody is processed. That is an "early" night; sometimes they run to 9 p.m. The day's totals are tallied: 500 new applicants, 600 people returning to see if their applications have been approved, 350 with problems of delayed checks or no checks--1,450 in all, most of them with sore feet. Another day ends. But tomorrow there will be more waiting in the long gray lines.

* The maximum weekly payment is $70; in July it will rise to $90. Benefits may be collected for 39 weeks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.