Labor Department fails to help those hurt by poor trade deals
08.24.2005

You’ve heard it time and time again from those who support bad trade deals like the failed North American Free Trade Agreement and the recently passed Central American Free Trade Agreement:
They say American workers who lose their jobs will receive assistance from the federal government. This assistance is supposed to help those who end up taking jobs that pay much less than the one they had before their plant pulled up stakes and went out of the country.

Now there’s a recent report in the Wall Street Journal that shows the assistance is hard to come by. According to the newspaper, a law that was supposed to help workers negatively affected by trade isn’t working.

The law says workers older than 50 who lose a job and then take a lower-paying one within six months are supposed to get a government check for half the difference between the new and old wage for up to two years with a $10,000 cap.

But the so-called wage insurance program is off to a slow start. Between its launch in August 2003 and December 2004, the program paid only 1,403 workers, the Labor Department says.

The Bush Labor Department waited until the day the law said the program was to begin before issuing guidelines to the state governments that administer it. State governments are having a difficult time implementing the federal program, the newspaper reported.