Starting over
Worker retraining programs are popular but fall short of solving the job shortage
LANSING, MICH. --In the twilight of his working years, Michael Wey should be coasting into retirement from his factory job at toolmaker Olofsson Corp. here. Instead, the 58-year-old father of three spends long days in the classroom at Lansing Community College learning how to become a home inspector while his wife's paycheck from her secretarial job covers the bills. After 15 years at the factory, Wey was laid off in September 2002 from his $22.10-an-hour job when Olofsson succumbed to competitive pressures and shuttered its plant.
Finding himself unemployed, underskilled, and too young to collect Social Security, Wey took advantage of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program. Under the program, workers who are laid off because of outsourcing or foreign competition may be eligible for funding for up to two years of retraining in another field as well as two years of income. Wey hopes to get his contractor's license in residential construction. "I'll have a lot of different options for work, and construction jobs will always be there," he says.
Wey is one of the fortunate ones. After three years of job losses, some workers have turned to federal retraining to broaden their skills in a changing economy. But funds for such programs are limited, and many report difficulty finding jobs in new fields. And the sheer number of layoffs in some industries leaves many unemployed without much chance of retraining. In Michigan, 170,000 manufacturing jobs have been eliminated since 2000, many lost to labor overseas. The increase in requests for retraining benefits, coupled with a funding cap instituted by Congress in 2002, has drained the program's coffers in the hardest-hit states. In the Lansing area, TAA ran out of money just three months into its 2004 fiscal year. As a result, hundreds of unemployed factory workers in Michigan are on waiting lists for money to learn skills and hopefullygain work in promising sectors like healthcare or high tech.
Battleground. With outsourcing and job losses being key campaign issues, both President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry have visited this battleground state in recent weeks to win the state's 17 electoral votes. Al Gore beat Bush in 2000 by about 200,000 votes in Michigan, and polls show a dead-even race for the White House. An April poll by Lansing-based EPIC/MRA showed 47 percent of state voters favoring Kerry and 45 percent standing behind Bush.
Speaking in Ann Arbor in late April, Kerry stressed the need to expand the TAA program to provide assistance to a wider range of displaced workers. Just a week later, the Senate blocked a measure that would have extended benefits to service workers and increased funds for the program. Now, only workers who manufacture a product directly impacted by trade can qualify, and the program excludes workers in the service sector. The Bush administration tripled funding for TAA in fiscal 2004 to $1.3 billion from its 2002 levels but requested slightly less in its 2005 budget proposal. And Bush has said little about the program since.
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