USDOL Issues Guidelines on Serving Participants – including those with Limited English Proficiency – under the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program

For many years, the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute (WAI) has urged the public workforce system to adopt policies that would increase the access of Limited English Proficient (LEP) workers to occupational training for family-sustaining jobs.  One of the early events that stimulated our interest in this issue was a case that dates back to the mid-1990s in El Paso, Texas.  In El Paso substantial numbers of laid-off Spanish-speaking manufacturing workers received certification under the NAFTA–related portion of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program.  Because increased international trade occasioned the lay-off of these workers, they were entitled to education and training benefits (in this case, their employer moved their jobs across the border to Mexico).  Despite that TAA certification, these workers were shut out of occupational training and shuttled into English as a Second Language (ESL) courses.  After years of seeking the benefits to which they were entitled, the Asociacion de Trabajadores Fronterizos (ATF), a group representing these workers, sued the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to obtain the vocational training promised by the Trade Act.  The suit alleged that, although some ESL courses are designed to relate the English language instruction to occupational training, the Texas courses did not do so, leaving the workers without the skills they needed to become re-employed.

In January, 2006, a federal judge entered an order providing for the enforcement of a settlement agreement that ended three years of litigation involving federal courts in Washington, D.C., and El Paso.  Under the settlement, DOL and the Texas Workforce Commission will spend $6.5 million on job training for the El Paso workers who received deficient training.  To settle this case, DOL agreed to implement a number of policies nationwide, including a recognition that dual-language training programs – in which necessary occupational skills and English are taught in a single integrated curriculum – are most effective for workers with limited proficiency in English and should be developed, even though they are more costly.  The settlement also specifically required that training be designed to make each worker job-ready in a named occupation.  This requirement ends the practice of naming a remedial education course (i.e., “English as a Second Language”) as the occupation for which a worker is being trained.

 (For more information on the El Paso case, go to http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2106)

On February 2, 2006, the DOL issued guidance to states to clarify their policies on serving participants, including those with limited English proficiency, under the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and the now-expired NAFTA-TAA programs (the later program was integrated into TAA in 2003).  While it does not say so directly, the guidance is clearly related to the El Paso case.  These policies include eliminating barriers to offering language and occupational training programs simultaneously, promoting what is known as a “contextual learning” approach to serving Limited English Proficient (LEP) workers. 

The El Paso court action and the new USDOL Guidance Letter are important because they clarify the content required of TAA training programs for LEP workers.  These training programs should be offered in a dual-language format and should include technical skills classes, customized and on-the-job training, as well as remedial and language education.  TAA will employ remedial education and language instruction only when they enable workers to complete other training programs or to enter occupations targeted by local workforce officials (or stand-alone only in rare cases where the individual has marketable occupational skills and only needs the basic education or language skills to obtain employment).  Other important policy clarifications are also covered in the guidance letter, including reinforcement of the goal that training lead to employment at a substantially equal or greater skill level and an average weekly wage level not less than 80% of the workers pre-layoff employment.

Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs), especially labor representatives, as well as union leaders, training program operators, and advocates for immigrant and LEP workers, have been asking for a more detailed set of tools to help them assure the best possible provision of services to those workers and to the employers who need them in today’s economy.  To help, the Institute has secured funding from the Anne E. Casey foundation for an assessment of the policies and practices in use by the public workforce system in serving LEP workers.  The Institute will document both the practices in the public system that serve to limit access to programs — and ultimately to jobs — for LEP workers, as well as promising practices that should be shared throughout the system.

In the coming months, WAI will be embarking on a survey of workforce boards regarding their policies and programs for serving limited English proficient workers.  Based on our findings, we will create a set of tools that WIB labor representatives and others can use to discourage the policies and practices that limit opportunity for these workers and encourage those policies and practices that create pathways to good jobs and careers. 

The new USDOL guidance on these issues is a significant aid in those efforts and we believe that WIBs – with the encouragement of labor representatives and their high road allies – should adopt this approach beyond the trade programs alone.