At 60, Robert Sanchez's job prospects aren't great, but the plant supervisor at UNM's Printing Services is now more concerned with finding jobs for his 13 employees who were laid off with him Monday.
The 14 employees lost their jobs when their supervisors told the crew Monday morning that printing services was closing its doors after 40 years of service due to a deficit the University said it could no longer manage.
"Nobody had any idea; we had heard rumors but that was about it," Sanchez said. "It's not the fault of our bosses. When I took over the plant many years ago, it had a big deficit and we've never been able to get out of it. The University felt we were an auxiliary service and really weren't needed anymore. We do not have anything to do with students, and we really didn't have University backing, so the change was easy."
Chris Vallejos, the University's planning officer for Auxiliary Enterprises, said the plant was closed for several reasons, including soaring costs and an inability to keep up with competing printers.
"First, it was carrying a $983,000 deficit," he said. "Basically, over the last few years that deficit has been increasing."
Vallejos said that printing services had a hard time competing for University departments' business because they could get better prices from off campus printers who had the room to slash prices.
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"It's just a very competitive and expensive business, and the deck was stacked against us," he said.
He added that another problem was that as a nonprofit agency, printing services was limited to working with University-affiliated entities and state agencies.
"Many printing companies compete fiercely in this market, and our ability to do business was just too limited," Vallejos said.
Sanchez, who has worked at UNM Printing Services for nine years, said he came to the University because he thought it would be a good opportunity. He said agreed with Vallejos' assessment of what prompted the plant's demise.
"When Dave McKinney, the old vice president for Business and Finance, opened the door to let departments work with printers off campus, it was just too much to overcome," Sanchez said. "Still, I don't blame anyone. We were on a roller coaster and just caught in the middle. We'll just blame it on bad times."
Shane Urioste worked at printing services for two years, and said he thought the University could have done more to keep the plant alive.
"They could have supported us in a lot of other ways and could have thrown more support our way by pushing University departments to work with us," he said. "We also could have been set up as a classroom tool, teaching students about the press and about computers."
Urioste said he came to printing services because he wanted to learn a trade. He said he is leaving with doubts about how much UNM cares about its employees.
"We just won a national award for printing quality and a lot of people who have been here for a long time were hurt by this decision," he said. "It's not going to be easy for a lot of them without degrees to find other work. The severance package was good, but it's hard. They just shouldn't have put the weight of turning this business around on our shoulders because we're printers, not businessmen or marketing people."
While the University could not give specifics of the severance package, Urioste said it included pay through mid-December.
While the economy is struggling and it isn't the best time to be job hunting, Sanchez said he is pulling every string he has to find his former employees jobs.
"Some of these people have been working at the University for 30 years and are getting older, so it may be hard for them to find reasonable work at comparable pay," he said. "I'm not really worried about me right now. I think I can find jobs for most of them but not all of them. It's just too many people to place."
Sanchez said the change is a difficult situation and knows exactly what the hardest part of adjusting to life after printing services will be.
"When you're plant superintendent, you know what you'll miss the most because you see it all," he said. "I will miss my employees. They are like my children now, and I certainly will miss them the most. All in all, we had a good crew."
