When free trade leads to layoffs, unemployed workers reap benefits
By GREG BARRETT | Gannett News Service
KANNAPOLIS, N.C. — Don’t cry for Kannapolis in North Carolina or Celina in Ohio or any number of other factory towns that have lost jobs to for-eign labor.
When free trade affects the livelihood of U.S. workers, a capitalist government exhibits socialist tendencies. Globalization may cost the United States about one million manufacturing jobs each year, but laid-off workers are offered a relative bounty.
Unlike employees who lose jobs because of a slumping economy or bad decisions by executives, workers sacrificed to global bartering typically are eligible for between 18 months to 24 months of unemployment pay. They also get tuition and books for education and retraining.
It’s payback for being uprooted by trade decisions that benefit society as a whole.
North Carolina State University economics professor Michael Walden estimates that apparel imports save U.S. consumers a minimum of $19 billion annually. In return, Washington provides a benefits package that costs taxpayers about $1.2 billion each year.
In North Carolina’s Rowan and Cabarrus counties, where 3,688 residents lost their textile jobs on July 31, laid-off workers were given access to trade schools and community colleges, food banks and YMCAs, job counselors and social work-ers.
More than 800 former textile workers have signed up for classes at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. Another 1,200 are expected to enroll within the next year, swelling the student body by 50 percent.
“We’re scurrying to find the faculty,” said Rowan-Cabarrus vice president Jerry Chandler.
Embracing change
Some ex-workers are getting their GED or learning English as a second language. Others are taking classes in business administration, office technician work, truck driving, or child day-care.
Job losses tracked to free trade can make for wonderful opportunities, a “metamorphosis of sorts,” according to the gospel-style lecturing of career counselor Johnny Worthy of the Urban League of the Central Carolinas.
“Yes, it is a terrible thing that they are sending our jobs across the water, but you have got to look at what you have to work with — which is a lot,” Worthy recently told a dozen laid-off textile workers in Kannapolis. “Cultivate the potential. This could be the best thing that ever happened to you. … Take advantage of this situation.”
Many of the laid-off workers are making the best of the situation. Herman Fisher lost his $10.25 per hour job when Pillowtex Corp., a sheet and towel maker bankrupted by imports, closed in July. Today, Fisher is going to college and chasing a dream.
“They are taking care of us, I can’t really complain,” he said of the various government agencies housed temporarily in Pillowtex Factory 4.
It was there, in a cavernous plant that smelled like a musty old gym, that counselors lectured this fall on such topics as “Taking the Fear Out of College” and “Taking the Fear Out of Starting (the) GED.”
Fisher, 46, is a former Army medic who has long wanted to work as a medical technician. His tuition, books, and even his book bag are paid for today by taxpayers.
And as long as he stays in school, he will draw 104 weeks of unemployment pay — about 78 weeks more than a worker whose job loss can’t be blamed on foreign trade.
“I just want to get my foot in the door” of a hospital, Fisher said. “It’s been a long time since I worked anywhere that you can advance. Do those jobs still exist?”