WICU12

The announcement was made inside a union hall where there has not been a lot of good news lately.  CLICK FOR VIDEO  Approximately 1,000 laid off workers from GE's Lawrence Park plant will receive Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits. The benefits were denied by the US Department of Labor twice in the past two years.

"We felt confident.  We knew we were right.  But of course, when you're denied twice, there's always a lot of apprehension," said Jim Pifer, President of UE Local 506.

Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits are given to workers who prove they lost their jobs due to foreign competition. GE always countered that the layoffs were due to the slow economy. But this year, officials at UE Local 506 hired attorney Ron DiNicola to help them with their case.

"We felt as long as we had a chance, we'd have kept appealing it.  We'd have taken it through the International Court of Trades if we had to.  Talking to our attorney, we thought we had a valid case. And when I say we had had hundreds upon hundreds of pages of documents supporting our claim, that's not an exaggeration," Pifer said.

"It could be readily determined that materials were coming in from foreign countries and that production was being shifted abroad," added DiNicola.

The laid off workers are now eligible to receive unemployment compensation extensions, health coverage, and money to pay for college or job training. It's not just union members who will receive the benefits. Salaried employees and even temporary workers are also eligible.

"For many of them, they lost hope.  But this hopefully will give them a shot in the arm and a way back into the work force and the subsistence to help carry them through that period," DiNicola said.

Workshops will be held at the union hall August 18-20 to help with the application process.  Applications will also be taken by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.  The department will have a booth at a career fair at the Bayfront Convention Center on August 25.

John Last