Trade Adjustment Assistance Program

When jobs go away for good, By Christine Vestal, August 3, 2010, Stateline.org: “In 2003, a now-defunct textile company called Pillowtex closed its plant in Kannapolis, North Carolina. Pillowtex was the town’s biggest employer by far, and most of the 4,800 workers who lost their jobs had little education and dim prospects for finding new jobs in manufacturing. Mike Easley, who was then the governor of North Carolina, responded by invoking a federal program targeted at workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition. Although the Trade Adjustment Assistance program had been around since the 1970s, states weren’t taking advantage of it much at the time. Easley managed to get millions of dollars in grants to help the Pillowtex workers and more than 12,000 others who also lost manufacturing jobs in the state. The money went for basic education, including high school equivalency degrees, and to re-train workers for jobs in other fields such as health care and construction that were in demand in the local communities and nearby cities. The program also came with generous health insurance subsidies and unemployment checks for more than two years – much longer than unemployment insurance normally lasts – while the workers pursued training and job searches…”