Chao Boosts Keystone State Jobs
March 19, 2004
Nearly $1 out of every $10 spent by the Bush administration to retrain workers who lost their jobs because of U.S. trade policy is going to Pennsylvania — a battleground state in the presidential election.
With $18.1 million awarded to the state March 4 by U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Pennsylvania has received a total of $41.8 million this fiscal year in regular and emergency grants to help furloughed steel, textile and other manufacturing workers learn new skills and, by extension, find new jobs.
The Pennsylvania total is 9.3 percent of the $450 million in total federal funds available for those workers nationwide, officials said. In all, 11,695 Pennsylvania workers were eligible for the Trade Adjustment Assistance training funds — the fourth-highest total in the country last year, according to Labor Department documents.
“As President Bush has said on many occasions, one worker out of work is one worker too many,” Chao said. “And the president and I are deeply committed to ensuring that transitioning workers have access to the training and the services they need to be able to get back into the work force.”
The money — awarded under the federal TAA program and Labor Department national emergency grants — provides aid to workers who lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade imports.
The TAA program is administered by state officials, who said the new funding would help enroll 5,717 Pennsylvanians in job-training programs. An estimated 151,000 manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania, the nation’s fifth-largest electoral prize, have been eliminated since Feb. 2001 — the month after President Bush took office.
The funding “is great news for former workers in Pennsylvania’s manufacturing sector, which has experienced 42 straight months of job losses,” Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell said in a statement March 4.
The new money comes three months after the Bush administration scrapped tariffs on foreign-made steel halfway through its three-year program — a decision affecting Pennsylvania steel producers and workers.
At least 8,300 steel-making jobs in Pennsylvania have been eliminated since 1998, according to the United Steelworkers of America labor union.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Chao, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) called for the end of “illegal dumping and subsidies which have taken away jobs from Americans — especially jobs in the steel industry.” Specter, who faces a tough re-election fight this year, also said questions about political motivations for the funding are “inevitable.”
But Chao said the funding is “based on need.”
“We always care about workers,” she said when asked if the money was meant to assuage Pennsylvania’s unemployed steelworkers.
Over the last two years, the Labor Department has sent $58.7 million to Pennsylvania’s program.
— Lara Jakes Jordan
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