Program helps retrain workers who lose jobs

An effort is afoot to add
service workers to the federal program.

MASON, Ohio (AP) — Nearly two years after losing his job at the former UBE Automotive plant here, Dan Sponaugle is starting a new career as a paralegal with the help of a little-known federal program that helps manufacturing workers who lose their jobs because of international trade.

Over the last 12 years, more than 71,242 Ohio workers such as Sponaugle have been approved for assistance under the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance, a 33-year-old U.S. Department of Labor program that pays for up to two years of training, extended unemployment compensation during training, and other assistance for workers whose jobs are outsourced overseas or lost to foreign competition.

“It’s been a godsend,” said Sponaugle, 38, who graduated in mid-August from Sinclair Community College with an associate degree in paralegal studies and has a job with a Dayton employment law firm. “It’s been a struggle, but we couldn’t have done it without TAA.”

Sponaugle lives with his wife, Julie, and daughter Jamilee. While he has gone to school full time, the family’s gotten by on extended unemployment benefits and his wife’s job at a pizza parlor.

TAA funding expires Sept. 30, and there’s an effort in Congress to increase funding and expand its benefits for the first time to include service workers.

Why Ohio needs this

Advocates say the program is critical for industrial states such as Ohio, which has lost more than 240,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, many as the result of foreign competition, and is experiencing a new wave of job cuts. For example, Ford Motor Co. is slashing thousands of jobs and closing locations, including the Batavia transmission plant.

Among several proposals to extend TAA, the most comprehensive, say advocates, is a bill sponsored by U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, which would double the training services budget from $220 million to $440 million. The bill would specifically extend TAA to service workers — such as those in telephone call centers — whose jobs are increasingly moving overseas.

That could have made the difference for about 170 workers at Avon Products call center in Springdale who were denied TAA certification in May after the beauty products maker announced it was scaling back operations, according to the nonprofit Policy Matters Ohio.

“I don’t think we’ve reached the low point in terms of job losses (in Ohio and Michigan)” said Rick McHugh, Midwest coordinator for the National Employment Law Project, another nonprofit that helps workers with unemployment and retraining issues.

“TAA is potentially the best tool we’ve got, if we want to give people a shot at maintaining a middle-class lifestyle.”

What happened

Sponaugle was one of about 300 workers who lost their jobs in October 2005 when Japanese-based UBE Automotive closed its plant. UBE produced aluminum wheels for General Motors, Ford and other automakers.

UBE, which said the Mason plant lost about $70 million in the two years before closing, moved production to a sister facility in Ontario that had an adjacent chrome plating operation, said Sponaugle, former president of United Auto Workers Local 2332 at the plant.

“We can compete [in world markets], but there needs to be fair trade instead of free trade,” he said.

There’s been no strong opposition to extending and expanding TAA, but advocates say some observers want any extension to be tied to an extension of the president’s authority to negotiate new trade agreements.

That would be a mistake, said Jon Honeck, research analyst with Policy Matters Ohio. “TAA reauthorization should stand on its own merits and should not be held hostage to future or pending trade deals,” said Honeck, who blames U.S. trade policies for many of Ohio’s manufacturing job losses.

After working 14 years as a die-cast machine operator at UBE, Sponaugle said he wanted to get out of manufacturing.

“We made good money if you factored in all the overtime,” he said, but his skills were limited to operating a die-cast machine.

Because of his union work and an affinity for detail, Sponaugle said working as a paralegal offered him the best opportunity for a stable income.

A paralegal can earn between $30,000 and $40,000, he said, about what his base pay was at UBE. But the career offers more stability than his old job, and he said he hasn’t rejected the idea of continuing his education and eventually getting a law degree.