Federal Aid Available to Displaced Workers

Five hundred Price Pfister employees who have been laid off since the company moved some jobs to Mexico are eligible for a federal program offering expanded unemployment benefits, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) has announced.

The Transitional Adjustment Assistance Program was passed in 1993 as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The program provides career counseling, job training, job-search allowances and an extra year of unemployment compensation for workers who have lost their jobs because their companies moved to Mexico or Canada, Berman said.

Price Pfister, the nation’s third-largest faucet company, has laid off about 500 workers from its Pacoima factory since January when it overhauled its manufacturing methods.

Although about 900 jobs remain in the Pacoima plant, many of the lost manufacturing jobs were shifted to a lower-cost factory in Mexicali, where Price Pfister opened a plant nine years ago.

Company officials said they will decide by the end of 1997 whether to shut down the Pacoima facility.

Last week, Price Pfister employees held a rally blaming “corporate greed” for the layoffs and calling for continued health insurance and a severance package for displaced workers.

The “TAA [program] alleviates some of the pain and suffering of the layoffs, and the goal is to train people to move into other kinds of work, which is all good,” said Peter Olney, director of the Los Angeles Manufacturing Project, which is supporting the Price Pfister workers. “But you’re talking about good union jobs leaving Pacoima and TAA doesn’t address that.”

Berman said his office is available to help eligible workers apply to the U.S. Department of Labor, which administers the program.

For information, call Berman’s office at (818) 891-0543.