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Draft Trade Bill Spurs Jobs Debate
Reprinted from the Oct. 16, 2007 edition of National Journal's Technology Daily
Draft Bill Spurs Talk About Trade-Related Job Aid
By Aliya Sternstein
Draft legislation intended to aid employees left jobless due to international trade has garnered the admiration of the U.S. technology industry but strikes some tech workers as inadequate.
On Friday, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released a discussion draft of a bill that would overhaul the Trade Adjustment Assistance program to, as they say, better meet the needs of those affected by globalization.
The bill would expand coverage to service-sector employees, including workers in the high-tech and telecommunications industries. Today, TAA only offers income support and training to workers who are involved in producing goods. Most programmers and other tech professionals are excluded -- even though some of their jobs also are being moved abroad.
Roger Cochetti, the U.S. policy director of Computing Technology Industry Association, said Tuesday that the bill responds to all the concerns his organization has expressed about assistance for information technology workers in the 21st century.
"The adverse political impact of more open trade in services would be significantly reduced" under the bill, thereby helping the U.S. tech industry grow, he said. And U.S. tech workers would get training to make them more competitive in the job market.
The bill also would bolster unemployment insurance, wage insurance and healthcare benefits. "The core problem is that the legislation is very ambitious," Cochetti said. "The expansion is only as useful as the funding it receives."
Officials at the tech group AeA have not read through the 111-page draft yet but said it appears the measure would benefit IT service workers affected by trade.
As for the proposal's effect on the overall U.S. IT workforce, AeA believes the employment numbers are healthy already. A recent AeA report found that unemployment among electrical and electronic engineers was only 1.9 percent in 2006.
John Miano, a founder of the Programmers Guild, which represents IT workers, said the bill does not address the root of the problem.
The "cause of the technology job losses is the Congress and the president, not the economy," he said. "They have enacted laws that have been intended to put U.S. technology workers on the unemployment line. It is ironic to have a national policy to replace U.S. technology workers with lower-paid workers from overseas, then to provide government money to retrain those workers who were put out by those policies."
Others say the proposal would not go far enough but is moving in the right direction. "IT professionals who have had their jobs outsourced will finally be receiving the economic body armor that the TAA has long offered their manufacturing counterparts," said Donna Conroy, a former technology professional who now directs a grassroots campaign to counteract claims that Americans cannot do science and technology.
But tech workers will have a hard time getting that protection, she said. "Unlike manufacturing workers, few of them are represented by unions or professional associations ready to aggressively pursue [Labor Department] certification of job loss [due to trade]."
She added, "Some, like myself, would use the training to leave the industry."
Posted by Andrew on October 22, 2007 10:49 AM | Permalink
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