THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 17, 1996 TAG: 9610170001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A19 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Patrick Lackey
LENGTH: 79 lines
The federal act setting up Unemployment Insurance was passed in 1935 and implemented by Virginia in 1938. The program hasn't changed a great deal since.
It should.
The program is designed for a time long past, when a person often worked for the same company his whole life. During hard times, the person was laid off, but when good times returned he was rehired - usually for the same job.
Today, people aren't just laid off. They are displaced or dislocated. That means their jobs have disappeared forever. Gone poof! Often, whole careers evaporate, owing to technological advances or foreign competition. In the early '80s, during mainly good times, more than 20 million Americans, mostly blue-collar workers, lost their jobs permanently. In the early '90s, white-collar workers took the hits. From 1991 through 1993, 9 million people lost jobs permanently, many of them highly educated professionals.
Time after time, what those people needed to find decent-paying new employment was TRAINING!
Unemployment payments - from $65 to $224 a week in Virginia - help a displaced worker get by while seeking work. But if the worker cannot acquire the proper training, he or she may find nothing that pays nearly as well as the job lost.
Regrettably, under the present unemployment program an unemployed person is expected to be looking for work, not obtaining training. To get training, even training he pays for himself, the unemployed worker must obtain permission from the Virginia Employment Commission, and that permission may be denied. Thus an unemployed person may forfeit unemployment benefits by seeking what he needs to gain employment - TRAINING!
For entertainment, I read long reports that I agree with. One, ``No One Left Behind,'' was issued this year by the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Retraining America's Workforce. The nonpartisan group comprised business executives, union leaders, former government officials, academics and sundry experts. It said that the Unemployment Insurance system is outdated and needs fixing.
Four of its recommendations:
All unemployment-insurance recipients should be allowed to receive training without losing their benefits.
Unemployed workers should be allowed to collect up to 30 percent of unemployment compensation in a lump sum to pay for training.
Companies and trade associations should be subsidized to train unemployed workers whom they intend to hire. Individuals should continue receiving unemployment-insurance payments during training.
The present hodgepodge of federal training programs for the unemployed should be consolidated and expanded. It is bewildering to the average worker and has gaping holes. If a person loses a job because of the effects of NAFTA, one program applies. Another provides aid to former defense workers.
The Clinton Administration is attempting to make sense out of the current menu of training programs. It should.
In South Hampton Roads, the Southeastern Virginia Job Training Administration helps laid-off workers find training money - if they qualify for one of the federal programs.
But last fiscal year, that office ran out of money with 3 1/2 months left in the year. It came up short, even though its existence is not widely known. ``We're like the best-kept secret around,'' said Maryann Miller, program manager there for the dislocated-worker program.
The past two Congresses have cut funding for training unemployed workers. That was stupid.
``There is generally a lot less training money now than was available in the Sixties, Seventies and early Eighties,'' said William F. Mezger, senior economist with the Virginia Employment Commission. More training money was provided then, he said, because it was believed the training was required, to catch workers up with advancing technology in manufacturing.
Now, with times changing faster, whole new skills are required, sometimes in entirely new areas. Clearly, the federal government needs to get serious about training for the unemployed. Seventeen states, but not Virginia, have recognized the need for training the unemployed and provided additional funds beyond the federal programs. Virginia money spent on training the unemployed would be money that didn't have to be spent on social services down the road. Gone are the days when a certain amount of training was enough. The modern worker, employed or unemployed, needs constant training to keep up. by CNB