The requirement that an import must contribute importantly to the job loss needs serious reexamination. This language has been used to deny relief to machinists who made shoe dies in the St. Louis area. Even though shoe production declined absolutely and unemployment was significant and shoe imports increased, relief was denied to the diemakers on the ground that a decline in shoe production and a survey of customers' orders from the plants showed that other considerations were more important in the subjective view of the administrator, specifically that there had been no imports of shoe

dies.

Jobs lost by a company moving abroad are not covered unless the foreign plant is in operation and imports come in before the U.S. plant is shut down or employment drops. The law is specific on this, according to a Labor Department interpretation.

Therefore, the law should be changed so that adjustment assistance will compensate workers who are displaced by the threat of imports. For example, workers at the McAlester, Okla., Lockheed plant have lost half of their work to Canada. The Department of Labor denied the application for assistance because the import of air frame subassemblies will not begin until July of 1977. The workers are jobless, however, because of the impending air frame imports.

Work qualifications should be changed. For example, the 1-year rule should be changed in section 223(b). Instead of requiring that the employee's separation date be less than 1 year before petitioning, 2 years before the date of filing should be retroactively included. Legislation for this purpose has been introduced by Congressman Phil Sharp and Senator Birch Bayh as H.R. 4460 and S. 939.

Under the current law, a worker who files for relief more than 1 year after he loses his job is out of luck. But often it takes more than 1 year for a worker to get evidence to apply for adjustment assistance. If a whole industry is filing, it takes about 1 year before injury is determined. Therefore, the proposal to extend the timing to 2 years should be adopted, retroactively, as these bills propose. The attached list of plants, appendix II, that could be affected by this change shows how restrictive the payout is under present law, and how extensive the impact of imports is even in the token program now in place. Many other work qualifications should be changed. To be eligible for benefits, the worker:

One: Must have been working at the time of separation under section 247 (14). Thus workers on vacation, sick leave, disability, union duty, or other absence are not eligible. Eligibility at the impact date or immediately before it should be included.

Two: Must have worked for 26 of the previous 52 weeks under section 231 (b) (2). This should be changed to comparable unemployment compensation standards, such as earnings in at least two quarters or at least 15 weeks in the previous 52 weeks.

Three: Time for applying for training or relocation should be extended to 1 year from the present limit on applications to 6 months currently under section 233 (b)(2).

Four: Amounts for retraining and the $500 relocation expenses maximum should be raised substantially.

These are just a few of the reasons that workers have not received what the proponents of adjustment assistance promised. But delivery

of benefits cannot be entirely cured only by remedying those defects in the law, because even more fundamental delivery problems exist:

One: Most workers don't know that imports cost their jobs. Companies with worldwide plants, or importers, seldom tell workers why the plant has closed. Small businesses have equal difficulty in knowing the impact of imports.

For example, the 2,700 products given preferential entry under the 1974 Trade Act are not widely known to affected workers.

Two: Reporting of import data is minimal. Section 608 and 609 of the Trade Act requiring the relation to production data has become a statistical project rather than the basis for meaningful analysis. Workers and business must prove injury, but most products and parts of products come in under reports where the imports are classified as "basket categories."

For example, metal articles not elsewhere classified might include a railroad part or a golf club handle. It makes little difference for customs purposes, but workers and businessmen must prove injury to get action. Yet the executive branch does not require adequate reporting and the trading community fights attempts to get reports.

The frustration of these provisions-a legal requirement for proof from the injured while evidence of proof of injury is in the hands of the Government and the groups which do not want to report-has already caused problems for workers and firms adversely affected by trade.

From a public policy point of view, however, these problems have become much worse. The Nation cannot know how deep the penetration of imports is unless sections 608 and 609 of the law are fully enforced.

Three: Workers cannot be fully identified by company and State employment agencies. Thus the fact the certification has taken place is not enough. For delivery of benefits, the injured worker must be identified. In some plants, for example, the proof that a worker was displaced because of black and white TV imports was hard to make because workers had been involved in both black and white and color production.

Four: Choosing the worker to be compensated becomes a problem: This administrative matter is magnified because of bumping by seniority in so many of the Nation's diverse collective bargaining agreements. In one case, for example, workers who had jobs for 20 years were denied benefits because they had accepted a transfer lasting as short as 12 hours immediately before becoming unemployed. A case history of that is spelled out in the Federal Mogul Bower, Roller Bearing Division, TEA-W-165.

A company hard hit by imports may set in motion a series of downward bumps until someone is finally out of work. In such a situation a high-paid, long-service worker, whose job was displaced by imports, often bumps down into a lower paid job. But the job of the person finally bumped may not have been import-related. The Machinists Union had to go to court to make sure that a worker who took another job with another firm and then became unemployed was eligible for adjustment assistance benefits. That is the Rohr case.

The GAO and other analysts of adjustment assistance have reported on many of these experiences, but an overall, serious study of

the impact of these programs on human beings and the towns in which they live has not been taken.

In Tazewell, Va., where 1,000 jobs of steelworkers once existed, there are now 34 jobs in a minibolt plant.

The horror story of Chicopee, Mass., where an IBEW local in general instruments electronics which had more than 2,000 workers in 1967 had dwindled to 200 in 1972-with adjustment assistance. In 1977, there are 35 workers there. They reprocess returns, they say. The cost in benefits was $4 million. The jobs are gone.

Workers want jobs-good jobs. They do not want to pay for the export of jobs and then face the bureaucratic nightmare of the current method of adjustment assistance.

American industry has had a similar set of frustrations with adjustment assistance-with one serious difference. American industry has been encouraged by these policies to move abroad. As with the worker cases, adjustment assistance that has been recommended for small business operations, such as mushrooms, has often been frustrating and ridiculous.

Congressman James Burke has been critical not only of the experience with adjustment assistance for the nonrubber-footwear industry, but also with the GAO report about the industry.

Administrative delays and burdensome requirements followed the same pattern as worker assistance, he said:

On paper the program couldn't sound better-technical assistance, loans, financial assistance; it's all sealed, and delivered, and expedited to boot, but finding a firm that has benefited by all this Government largess is like trying to find the proverbial "needle in the haystack."

In nonrubber footwear, only 25 firms had applied and 16 had been certified, and only 4 had received any aid at all. That was under the "expedited" assistance from President Ford when Commerce had predicted that 200 firms would apply and at least 150 would be eligible. Now they are talking "super" adjustment assistance-but it sounds like the same shell game.

Community assistance has had an even worse experience-a total flop. Only after the United States is fully employed could such a program work.

The Congress must ask itself whether it is now time to grant to American industry and workers what is granted in the trade law and other law to American agriculture: that industry receives effective help from Government plus protection from imports where they undercut domestic production. Thus, the quotas on farm products and targeted price supports are properly recognized as necessary parts of Government policy. The Trade Act protects these agricultural industries from being undercut. American workers deserve at least the same treatment.

That is our formal statement, Mr. Chairman. [Attachments to the statement follow:]

88-681-77-11

APPENDIX I

CUMULATIVE SUMMARY OF TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE CASES-APR. 3, 1975-FEB. 28, 1977

TABLE 2.-STATE DISTRIBUTION OF WORKER PETITIONS, APR. 3, 1975-FEB. 28, 1977

APPENDIX Ib

TABLE 3.-WORKER PETITIONS BY STANDARD INDUSTRIAL CLASSIFICATION, APR. 3, 1975-FEB. 28, 1977

Cobblers, Inc., Culver City.

CALIFORNIA

Ratner Clothes Corp., Div. of San Diego, Calif. Divisions, Chula Vista.

Russell, Burdsall and Ward, Inc., Los Angeles.

Ford Motor Company, Los Angeles.

RCA Corporation, Los Angeles.

Ford Motor Company, San Jose.