Expanded TAA program set to expire
Photo/Brandon McKenney
Marty Perlmutter, of the state Department of Labor's Portland CareerCenter, has helped insurance and IT workers apply for TAA benefits
Four janitors working at Fairchild Semiconductor in South Portland lost their jobs last fall when the company shifted manufacturing of its semiconductor wafers to South Korea. Since the janitors were responsible for cleaning that part of the facility, they no longer had work.
So the cleaners, who were employed by a company called UGL-Unicco, applied for and received federal benefits that help laid-off workers retrain for new jobs that aren’t so vulnerable to global trade.
Two years ago, the janitors wouldn’t have been eligible for the weekly payments and education funds supplied under the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which supports workers displaced by foreign competition. The program for decades had only covered workers who produce goods. But that changed in 2009 when Congress updated the 48-year-old program as part of the stimulus bill, expanding it to include workers who provide services.
But the TAA revisions were temporary, and are now set to expire on Jan. 1 unless Congress takes action. And while the program historically has had broad bipartisan support, some worry its looming deadline is not attracting enough attention. Judy Pelletier, who oversees the TAA program in Maine, says, “I just don’t know if it is on the radar screen. We just need to be aware that it could run out.”
The Senate Finance Committee, on which Sen. Olympia Snowe has a seat, was at press time working on a bill to extend the TAA benefits, according to a spokesman for Sen. Susan Collins’ office. All four of Maine’s congressional delegates indicated strong support for the program.
But proponents of the extension worry that a crowded agenda during a lame duck session will overshadow the TAA measure, which could be packaged with other legislation. House members declined to extend unemployment benefits for three more months on Nov. 18, a potential bellwether for other safety net programs such as TAA.
Finding jobs
Since the expansion went into effect in May 2009, 74 service workers in Maine have received trade adjustment benefits, of more than 1,500 Maine workers in total, according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor. Pelletier says, though, that number could grow. “We’re starting to see more of those come through as we’re starting to see more layoffs.”
Under the program, jobs are considered impacted by trade if they are moved overseas or if they’re eliminated due to competition from foreign imports.
Sarah Bigney, an organizer with the AFL-CIO union in Maine, says a wider range of jobs are being threatened by trade, and more are becoming “offshorable.”
“Not just the blue-collar job, but the white-collar job, the jobs with college degrees behind them,” Bigney says. “It’s not just textiles and paper; it’s anything that can go overseas. The technology jobs can go overseas even quicker. They just need an Internet connection somewhere.”
Experts say service jobs facing greater foreign competition include computer software programmers and call center employees, as well as finance workers, X-ray technicians, insurance workers, engineers and those employed in research and development.
In 2009, Maine had 490,893 jobs classified as service providing, a 10,160 drop from 2008, according to the Maine Department of Labor. In the first quarter of 2010, the most recent data available, that number dropped to 473,971.
Marty Perlmutter, of the Maine DOL’s Portland CareerCenter, has in the past 18 months helped insurance employees at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and IT workers at Sappi Fine Paper in South Portland apply for trade adjustment benefits. “It never made sense to me that one sector of the economy would be eligible if their jobs went to, well, name the country, and that those people whose jobs went overseas, say at a call center, weren’t eligible,” Perlmutter says.
In the past fiscal year, Maine has received more than $5 million to cover TAA workers’ retraining costs, as well as roughly $2.1 million in weekly allowance funds, $1.1 million in administrative funds and about $69,000 in job search and relocation funds, for a total of $8,305,855, according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor.
In the same period, 66,556 service workers qualified nationwide for the TAA program, and the program’s total cost, for all workers, was about $975 million.
In the TAA revision, numerous small adjustments were made, and many more workers became eligible. Consequently, the number of petitions for aid more than doubled nationally and just about doubled in Maine, according to Pelletier.
Under the revised TAA parameters, workers receive up to 156 weeks of cash payments — calculated similarly to unemployment benefits — while they train for a new job. The average cost of retraining a Maine worker in 2009 was $5,178, but workers here can receive up to $25,000 to cover their education, Pelletier explains. New occupations, such as in respiratory therapy, nursing, business management, wind power technology and accounting, are popular among those seeking retraining, she adds. Workers also receive a tax credit covering 80% of their health insurance, and are reimbursed for job search and relocation costs.
In the past year, 68% of the participants tin Maine’s TAA retraining program found new employment, with an average annual wage of around $29,000, according to federal statistics. Pelletier says in the past, this percentage has always been in the 80s, but the bad economy has dampened the program’s success rate.
The TAA program has helped many people who go through shock after losing their job, Pelletier says. “These are people who have worked all their lives in one occupation and just want to go back to work and find another job. Once they settle and go to work, they end up staying in that job for a very long time.”
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