Making Our Union Stronger in Tough Times: Print Sector Taps Trade Adjustment Dollars to Help Victims

Late last summer, typesetters at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch were summoned to a conference room where they found the paper's big bosses with, as one worker described, "their heads hung low."

Managers announced that 11 people who worked on display advertising — more than half the composing room staff — would be laid off. The paper was sending their jobs to Delhi, India.

CWA Local 6300 went into action and began researching how members could get federal Trade Adjustment Assistance.

Benefits include money for training, from classes offered by employers to college-level curricula. People in training fulltime can get weekly allowances for up to two years, transportation and relocation funds and a tax credit to cover 65 percent of the cost of health insurance.

John Ebeling, vice president of the print and media sector for Local 6300, said he recently spoke with a worker who never expected to go back to school, but is now excited about future possibilities in desktop publishing or graphic arts.

"I said, 'Are they taking care of your tuition?' and she said, 'John, they not only pay my tuition, they take care of the books and fees. She was really excited about it," Ebeling said.

Not all the workers have taken advantage of the benefits yet, but through the union's efforts, all 11 were certified as eligible. Ebeling said applying involved the usual array of government paperwork and rules, but the process moved fairly quickly. Once eligible, though, it's up to the workers to decide how and when to begin using the benefits.

The St. Louis workers are the second group of CWA printing sector members so far to receive TAA benefits. In San Jose, Calif., 20 graphic artists, proofreaders and other production staff for display advertising at the Mercury News saw their work shipped to India in 2007.

Gloria LaRiva, printing sector president for the Northern California Media Guild-CWA, said that among workers who have used the benefits, one has become a medical technician, another became expert at computer graphics programs and one went to school for web design and is starting his own business.

The newspapers where composing room workers have been hardest hit by outsourcing to India are non-union shops. The fact that only two CWA-represented papers have done so illustrates how important a strong union contract is, CWA Printing Sector President Bill Boarman said.

"We know that many newspapers would send our jobs to India without a second thought if it were easy for them," Boarman said. "Our job is to make sure it's not easy. When it does happen in spite of all our best efforts, our job is to ensure that our members have access to all possible financial and retraining benefits, including TAA."

As for saving money by using cheap labor in India, the Post-Dispatch learned that outsourcing can backfire. Several large advertisers publicly expressed anger when they heard about the scheme and at least one, a car dealer, pulled his ads for several weeks. 

"I'm not trying to be a rabble-rouser, but I wanted to make my point clear," car dealer Dave Sinclair told a local alternative newspaper. "Here we are talking about jobless rates in the United States and they're shipping jobs overseas."