Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303210268
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
GOOD TRAINING DOESN'T MEAN GOOD WORK
Bub Tolley is grateful for the federal money that's paying his way at New River Community College, where he's studying business administration.He hopes it helps him toward a four-year degree and eventually a good job. If he could find a good job now, though, he would take it in a minute.
Tolley, 29, is accustomed to the $12 per hour he made before being laid off at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in January. He hates waiting for his unemployment check to arrive, and he knows that "a degree doesn't guarantee you're going to find a job after you get through with your classes."
That's already happened to some people in his predicament, such as some former AT&T employees who, like Tolley, qualified for Trade Adjustment Assistance under the Federal Trade Act of 1974. They went to two- and four-year colleges, various technical schools or wherever else they could get the training they wanted. But many still need work.
"It's very difficult," says Jack Beason, job service manager at the Radford office of the Virginia Employment Commission. "Many are having to leave the area. We really do need industry here now. We're getting a good work force that's been trained, but no jobs."
Beason says 391 displaced workers are receiving job training at the moment, taking courses at Virginia Tech, Radford University, various community colleges, truck-driving schools and the like.
A total of 1,074 either are active in the trade program, eligible for it or have completed it but haven't found work. The commission keeps tabs on them until work comes along.
Like the AT&T employees, Tolley qualified for help because his job was lost to foreign competition. Foreign companies underbid Hercules Inc., the arsenal contractor, for the manufacture of propellants, though Hercules was the lowest domestic bidder.
Arsenal workers laid off between Aug. 27, 1991, and Nov. 30, 1992, will be eligible for the program, which includes training, a job search allowance, a relocation allowance and a weekly trade readjustment allowance after they exhaust their state unemployment benefits.
Tolley is eligible for 26 weeks of state unemployment benefits. He can get another 26 weeks in trade readjustment pay if he remains enrolled in the approved courses he is taking, and that could be extended for another 26 weeks, Beason says.
Tolley, 29, had gone to Radford University for one year after graduating from Radford High School, but quit to go to work. For a time he managed a Wendy's restaurant in Blacksburg. He then spent 6 1/2 years as a production worker at the arsenal. He received a 60-day notice of layoff before Christmas and his last official work day was Jan. 16. He left his job a few days early for the start of the community college's semester.
"We got quite a number of those Hercules people in under the wire," Beason says. "The schools really worked well with us to do that. . . . Hercules worked well, too, because those who wanted off could take an early out."
Beason says the retraining program includes a relocation allowance for people who find work elsewhere and money for setting up utility service and other household expenses.
And it will pay 90 percent of expenses for legitimate job interviews, wherever they might be.
"If a person has a bona fide interview in Columbia, S.C., we verify that they do have an interview and we pay mileage to and from it, plus motel, plus meals, at a 90 percent rate," he says.
"We're helping some people, especially the more skilled people like engineers."
Recently, the funds paid for a former arsenal engineer's move to Denver, where he will be project engineer at the new Denver International Airport.
The 60-day notice cushioned his layoff, Tolley says, but not much.
"Something that hits you that hard, you never really get fully ready for it."
He always had dreamed of getting a four-year accounting degree, and he is taking this opportunity to get two years out of the way.
But times are tight at home.
His fiancee, Donna Royal, was laid off last year, but now is working in an office in Christiansburg. His father, brother and sister all have been laid off in recent times.
"We're kind of watching what we're buying," he says. "We're not going overboard. We're sticking to a budget.
"I drive a race car at Pulaski County, pure stock. I've won several races. I'm going to try to run this year, but sponsorship is hard to find right now, the way the economy is."
A few years ago, he spent more than $7,000 on racing. That seems unlikely this season.
What he wants is a good job, sooner or later, and he wants it to be close to home. He doesn't want to move away.
Otherwise, his outlook is "pretty good. I know there's sunshine on the other side of the rainbow. It's a good feeling to know you didn't do anything to lose your job. School is going good. I'm making A's and B's in all my classes."