Teamsters back bill for aid to workers who lose jobs to unfair trade

By Mark Gruenberg, Press Associates Union News Service
December 2, 2014

WASHINGTON

The Teamsters are backing legislation by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to extend and expand federal aid to workers who lose their jobs due to unfair trade.

The aid, called Trade Adjustment Assistance, traditionally goes only to factory workers whom the Labor Department rules directly lost their jobs to subsidized foreign imports.

But during the depths of the Great Recession, the Obama administration's stimulus law expanded TAA to service workers who lost jobs because their firms lost customers from factories that shut down, or who lost business from factory workers who lost their jobs. That provision ran out when the stimulus law ended.

Brown's measure, introduced in late November, would restore the stimulus law's TAA and extend the entire program through 2020.

FULL story at link.