By ANN RICHARDS
Lorene Randall pulls up to International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 948, a union hall in Genesee County, Michigan. She’s been invited to speak to a group of laid-off workers brought together by the AFL-CIO. This Saturday is a typical morning for Michigan’s only dislocated worker facilitator.
Randall spends her workdays building relationships with the people, agencies and resources that can help laid-off workers connect with and increase the use of available training and family-support resources.
Randall would not have this job if she had not opted to retrain, she says. In mid-career, Randall retired from the automotive manufacturing industry, took advantage of employer tuition assistance and went back to school, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in labor relations from Wayne State University.
Rick McHugh and Lorene Randall work out of NELP’s Midwest office to increase the participation of Michigan’s unemployed workers in benefits programs that lead to retraining for new jobs. |
Now, through her work with the
National Employment Law Project’s (NELP) Midwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, Randall links idled workers with the help they need to continue supporting their families while retraining and finding new careers.
She spends considerable time working with mid-Michigan’s dislocated autoworkers, a group that often is eligible to apply for
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a package of benefits that delivers tuition assistance, income support and case-management services through the U.S. Department of Labor.
“I’ve been there,” Randall said. “Now it’s my turn to give back by serving as a listening ear and by finding the answers people need to get back to work.”
“Lorene looks out for people who have lost their jobs,” said Rick McHugh, NELP staff attorney and director of the organization’s Midwest office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “And thanks to her work, that’s one of the things NELP has been able to bring to the table - the worker’s perspective on what’s needed to develop effective workforce training programs in Michigan and elsewhere.”
Since 2006, NELP has been working in the Midwest to provide public education, technical assistance and advocacy around an agenda of policies and practices to help workers affected by economic dislocations. Funded with multiyear support of $1,276,000 from the Mott Foundation, NELP has developed a basic dislocated worker package for Michigan and Ohio, where tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost or moved off-shore. The Chicago-based
Joyce Foundation also funds the project.
When NELP began working in Michigan, a number of state laws and policies stood in the way of accessing and distributing dollars through various workforce training initiatives, McHugh says. Few of the state’s workforce agencies were familiar with federal supplemental benefits programs such as TAA, which is available to workers who become unemployed as a result of increased imports from, or shifts in production to, foreign countries.
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Established as part of the federal Trade Expansion Act in 1962, TAA was expanded in 1974, when Congress established the training component of the program. TAA currently provides support for up to 104 weeks of approved training in occupational skills. The program also provides weekly income-support payments - known as
Trade Readjustment Allowances - for a full year after a worker’s unemployment compensation benefits have been exhausted.
“With TAA benefits, qualified workers have the time, as well as the resources, to complete an associate’s degree or another type of training that can move them into solid, family-sustaining employment,” McHugh said.
“No one at the state level really understood how to apply for TAA - and frankly, the amount of paperwork required made it a big pain for workforce agencies. But the sheer number of people who needed assistance compelled the state to begin looking for other resources.”
Along with distributing more than 3,000 of its
certification manuals, NELP developed a series of trainings on TAA for state officials and staff of
Michigan Works!, the statewide system that manages local service centers for job seekers. NELP also helped develop new guidelines for distributing and tracking training dollars, enabling state agencies to steer extra dollars to areas experiencing large-scale worker dislocation.
“Once those log jams were broken - and agencies gained some experience with TAA - the handcuffs started to fall off and money began flowing,” McHugh said.
NELP has conducted more than 50 public presentations about TAA in union halls, college campuses and nonprofit agencies to date, McHugh says.
“We’ve been gaining a little notoriety," said Randall, noting the uptick from cities across mid-Michigan requesting that NELP present its “Building a Toolkit” training. Created in conjunction with the Michigan
Center for Civil Justice, the training combines coverage of basic TAA and dislocated worker programs with information on human needs program eligibility.
Approximately 8,700 Michigan workers filed for education and income support benefits through TAA in 2009 - a significant increase from 2005, when 2,800 workers accessed assistance. While the state’s sagging economy has propelled these numbers, NELP’s efforts have helped to pump an additional $30 million in training and family support funding into the state’s economy during that period. The practical experience that NELP has gained through its Midwest Economic Adjustment Initiative has been used to inform policy at the national level, McHugh says.
Mid-Michigan’s Mott Community College offers a number of educational options for new and returning students, including occupational associate degrees, certificates of achievement and alternative training preparation. |
In 2009, the passage of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which delivered additional
Workforce Investment Act funds for training and services for dislocated workers, gave NELP the opportunity to provide language and policy suggestions to inform reauthorization of TAA, says Andrew Stettner, NELP’s deputy director in Washington, D.C.
“Our Michigan and Ohio work has helped us identify many of the obstacles that stand in the way of workers accessing help, and we were able to work with Congress to put language into the legislation that removes those barriers,” McHugh said.
While expanding the use of TAA has been a major focus of its work in the Midwest, NELP also has worked with states to direct their dollars and other resources to assist distressed firms avoid layoffs altogether. While both Michigan and Ohio have some features of Early-Warning programs (Early Warning Networks are used to give communities time to avert or minimize the effects of plant closures and business failures) in place, they are not fully integrated and do not offer the technical assistance, access to capital and scale sufficient to avoid job losses and further closings.
“Right now, every time there’s a major dislocation, the state invites us in to explain worker rights,” said McHugh of his team of four that includes Randall; Lynn Minick, a workforce development specialist; and Lindsay Webb, a TAA coordinator.
But more needs to be done, he says. Using advance notice of plant closings gives both employers and employees time to consider layoff-aversion strategies, such as employee buyouts, seeking new products or restructuring businesses. Better use of the federal
Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) law could help preserve jobs, as could such practices as “work sharing,” which enables workers to remain in their jobs through a combination of reduced work schedules and unemployment benefits.
Going forward, NELP plans to focus on closing the gaps that exist between TAA and coordination of other unemployment services and help state “One Stop” agencies improve their reporting of TAA and training approval processes. Another goal, says McHugh, is increasing the number of “peer” networks, a particularly effective approach to helping laid-off employees during transition crises.
Peer networks give workers the opportunity to collect the information they need, connect with community services, begin looking for job referrals and prepare resumes. They also work with community leaders to plan a cooperative response to layoffs.
Which is why having a dislocated worker facilitator such as Lorene Randall - someone who is an effective, on-the-ground advocate for people who have lost employment - is so valuable to communities experiencing long-term job losses.
“NELP strives to bring a different perspective - a new pair of eyes - to systems in place to help the unemployed,” McHugh said. “We try to identify what doesn’t seem to be working, point out the barriers to participation and work with people to negotiate around those obstacles.”
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