TAA program continues to aid area unemployed

The more than 100 unemployed workers who attended a recent Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) training program are just a small portion of those in the region who are eligible for federal dollars to help with new skills training.

The Arkansas Department of Workforce Services sponsored two training sessions Nov. 24 at the Fort Smith Convention Center for those who lost a job related to increased imports or jobs being moved out of country.

According to federal literature, the TAA “is a benefit for those workers who lose their jobs or whose hours of work and wages are reduced as a result of increased imports.”

Benefits through the program include:
• Reemployment services to help unemployed workers prepare for and obtain suitable employment;
• Assistance in skill assessment, job search workshops, job development/referral and job placement;
• Workers may be eligible for training, job search allowance, a relocation allowance, and other reemployment services; and,
• A weekly Trade Readjustment Allowance (TRA) may be payable to eligible workers following their exhaustion of unemployment benefits.

According to state officials, between Jan. 1, 2009 and Nov. 23, 2010, 10 companies in Sebastian County alone were TAA certified representing 1,445 workers. In Arkansas during 2009, there were 20 TAA certified company layoffs or job cuts representing 1,520 workers.

Considering the loss of area manufacturing jobs, the number of TAA certified workers in the region is not a surprise. The Fort Smith metro manufacturing sector employed an estimated 21,100 in October, down from an upwardly revised 21,300 in September, and down from the 21,500 employed in the sector in October 2009. Employment in the sector is down 31.27% from a decade ago when January 2001 manufacturing employment in the metro area stood at 30,700.

Part of the manufacturing job decline in the region resulted in the Governor’s Dislocated Worker Task Force partnering in 2007 with Arkansas Tech University-Ozark and area hospitals to offer a Practical Nursing Program for workers who were TAA certified.

Although the TAA program initially supported those who lost manufacturing jobs, it was expanded under the federal stimulus bill to include “service sector workers adversely impacted by trade.”

A recent press release from the U.S. Department of Labor indicates that 3,507 Arkansas workers were TAA certified between May 2009 and September 2010. Of those, 717 were covered under the expanded TAA rules. During the same period, a total of 367,427 workers nationwide were TAA certified, with 155,147 certified under the expanded rules.

In a Nov. 18 statement, DOL Secretary Hilda Solis called for Congress to extend financial support for the expanded program.

“TAA benefits can help participants keep food on the table for their families, and training ensures they are prepared for new employment opportunities,” Solis said in the statement. “Unless Congress takes action, however, the expanded TAA program will expire at the end of 2010. That could leave a great many trade-impacted workers across the country without needed support and services. And it would undermine the progress we are making as a nation toward economic recovery.”