Laid Off Workers

Individuals who find themselves a victim of a layoff or find a new job that doesn't offer health insurance face a difficult task in deciding how to replace that insurance. While the options may be more expensive than a subsidized corporate plan, some do offer tax benefits an employer cannot. The first option is to continue your previous employer's insurance through COBRA. While this maintains your coverage, it's expensive, as you now must pay the full premium and employers usually tack on an extra 2 percent to cover administrative fees.

EVERY NOW AND then, on this crazy planet we call Earth, you come across a story so darned heartwarming that you need to take a prescription antacid. This is such a story. I found out about it from alert reader David Rankin, who sent me the Jan. 3 front page of the Sevier County, Tenn., Mountain Press ("Sevier County's Daily Newspaper"). On it is an article by J.J. Kindred about a Danville, Va., based textile company called Dan River, which was closing its Sevierville plant and laying off workers.

Mildred Miller was just notified that her unemployment benefits will be cut off two weeks before Christmas. She can't think about it without breaking down. "I don't know what I'm going to do; I really don't know," Miller said Monday, her eyes welling with tears as she scanned job listings at Baltimore County's work force development center in Essex. "I don't want to get evicted. If we get on the street, I don't know where we'll be. " The Middle River resident, a single mother with a 6-year-old son, is one of thousands in Maryland and about 2 million nationwide whose payments will be phased out in December if the federally funded emergency unemployment compensation program expires Tuesday as planned.

Laid-off Hostess Brands workers, including 192 in Maryland, are eligible for federal trade assistance benefits, the U.S. Department of Labor said Tuesday. The Trade Adjustment Assistance program offers retraining help and other aid, coordinated by state workforce agencies, to people who lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade. The Labor Department said its investigation showed "increased imports of baked products contributed importantly to the company's sales declines and worker separations.

Baltimore County is holding information fairs this week to assist the more than 1,000 workers who have been laid off from the Sparrows Point steel mill as part of a temporary idling of the primary steelmaking operations. The fairs will be held Thursday and Friday at the Severstal Sparrows Point Conference and Training Center, with morning and afternoon sessions each day. Each session will include presentations about unemployment insurance, federal Trade Adjustment Act benefits, union benefits and health care benefits.

A lawsuit brought by 112 laid-off Baltimore County union workers seeking reinstatement was dismissed in county Circuit Court yesterday.Judge John F. Fader II ruled that only five workers, now members of the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees, used the grievance procedure provided in their union contract. The judge said that because the others did not file grievances, they could not claim the contract was abrogated by the county.The five who filed grievances never had arbitration hearings, for reasons that union attorney Frank J. Collins said are "not clear" to him. The workers were represented by a different union at the time of the layoffs.

Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point shipyard has won a $60 million contract to build tunnel sections for a highway under Boston harbor, a company spokesman said today.The work will employ several hundred shipbuilders, many who have been laid off, for the next 18 months."Ecstatic" was the way Lonnie Vick, business agent for Local 33 of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, described his reaction to the announcement.Business at the shipyard has dwindled in recent years, so that now the union has only about 100 members working at the yard, Vick said.

Focusing on people's fears about losing their jobs, Maryland mortgage lenders are starting to offer a novel form of insurance that will make monthly house payments if the homeowner gets stripped of a job."Unemployment is a big issue when you're buying a home," said Robert M. Connelly, president of Atlantic Home Mortgage Corp. of Towson, which began offering the insurance about a week ago. "Homebuyers are very reluctant to sign on the bottom line not knowing whether they're going to have their job the next day. This helps them make up their mind to buy a home."

As the national economy continues to toss and turn, the unemployed are waking up to their worst nightmare: Even temporary jobs are scarce.From Boston to Baltimore to San Francisco, tens of thousands of laid-off workers have inundated employment agencies with resumes in search of temporary jobs to see them through the recession."

At least five of the 18 school facilities employees scheduled for layoffs or forced retirements at month's end will retain jobs in the department, Baltimore County officials said yesterday.New facilities director Gene L. Neff said the scheduled reduction of 18 employees threatened to drain a department already in desperate need of technical expertise. The five now slated to remain were chosen for their specific skills, such as computer-aided drafting.Neff said he is searching for ways to keep more of the targeted workers.