By Staff
Last summer we heard a free-trade agreement with Caribbean countries extolled as offering aid for American workers who lost their jobs to foreign competition.
Last fall, a couple of weeks before the presidential election, President George W. Bush shared a stage in an aircraft hangar in Rochester, Minn., with Michelle Clements, an electronics worker whose factory closed.
He cited federal aid she received to study law enforcement as an example of government help for dislocated workers.
Rhetoric, however, doesn't always mesh with reality.
The Chicago Tribune Oct. 15 detailed the story of a Michigan woman, Nancy Secor, 43, of Pinckney.
The mother of two was laid off in July after working 22 years for an auto parts plant.
She qualified for the same trade adjustment assistance program as Clements, but was informed there was no money left for her. Instead, she was told she would be placed on a waiting list. &#8221First they tell you you've lost your job,“; she said. &#8221Then they tell you this is available, there's a little light at the end of the tunnel. And then the light's gone.“;
With no prospects for a new job, she dug into her dwindling savings to invest $1,300 for paralegal training.
So, even though the auto industry is beset by foreign competition, the 50,000 U.S. employees of Delphi Co., whose jobs have been in jeopardy since the auto parts maker filed for bankruptcy reorganization last weekend, also may find assistance tough to get.
In the real world of pink slips and padlocked plants, government &#8221trade adjustment assistance“; often falls far short of talk offered by the White House when it's selling free-trade deals.
An estimated 300,000 to 450,000 manufacturing workers lose their jobs every year to foreign competition, yet in 2003, only 204,000 workers were certified eligible for trade assistance by the Labor Department, according to a Government Accountability Office investigation.
And even less, about 47,000, actually received retraining assistance, said the GAO, Congress' investigative unit.