Not a silver bullet

Recent local news articles have touted the Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Act as a means for unemployed workers to learn a new trade in the face of plant closures, diminished product demand and the transfer of jobs overseas.

A lesson learned from faraway Caldwell County, N.C. shows us that retraining and retooling isn't the only thing needed to correct unemployment. Caldwell County is to furniture what Youngstown was to steel. Furniture manufacturing was the main source of employment and revenue for County residents. When the Broyhill furniture factory and largest employer in town shifted operations to China several years ago, hundreds of former furniture makers went back to school.

NPR recently focused on two unemployed workers in Caldwell who used TAA and tried to make the leap from building couches and ottomans into the building and programming servers. The story of these two is representative of the struggles of many workers who go through job retraining programs. In the case of Bill Curtis and Margo Rice, once Google opened a server farm 200 yards from the closed furniture factory, they realized that three years of computer training wasn't enough to compete.

A three-part series from 'All Things Considered' first focused on how laid-off workers tried to retrain to enter a 21st century workforce. Part two focuses on the results of that effort and what they have done since. Tonight's segment will take a look at the Chinese labors who took over the furniture jobs.

* NPR: High-Tech Dreams Dissipate for Furniture Workers

NPR gets onboard

NPR's Morning Edition finally ran the piece this morning which they have been sitting on for two weeks. It was retooled a bit to also highlight today's John Edwards visit.

The tagline: Youngstown, Ohio, a former steel town an hour west of Pittsburgh, is getting ready to spend millions of tax dollars to shrink. It's a fairly radical plan, but one that Youngstown's mayor says is the best way to bring his struggling city back to economic health.

The audio is available here.

I guarantee you will see a lot of hope in Youngstown residents by listening to the story. There are excited people out there who really want to see the redevelopment of Youngstown through the 2010 plan. NPR is the latest in a string of media who are just helping us promote it. Last week was the AP story which ran, according to my count, in at least 78 papers or online editions. The possible audience within cities just like Youngstown is huge. I am excited to finally see Youngstown as part of progressive development, even if it means scaling back. Bigger doesn't always mean better and I think people outside the politicians and urban planners are starting to see that.

Miltonia Ave. on Youngstown's East Side, one focus of the story. Notice the lack of homes? Another case of planned development which never happened.