U.S. Work Share Program Helps Employers Avoid Layoffs

When business slowed last fall at Saint-Gobain, a plastics company in Bristol, R.I., the plant cut some employees’ hours by 40 percent. Fred Staudinger, a 55-year-old veteran line worker earning $21 an hour, found his week reduced to four days—and he was happy about it. The alternative was worse: possibly losing his job and living on unemployment insurance while he searched for a new position in a bleak market. Thanks to a program that helps companies on the brink of layoffs, Staudinger’s lost day of work didn’t mean a lost day of pay. The government reimbursed almost 70 percent of his missing salary, about $113 a week. In his off hours, Staudinger did chores around the house. “Have you heard of a honey-do list? My wife made sure I had one,” he says.

Rhode Island is one of more than two dozen states now using free federal dollars to experiment with a kind of unemployment insurance in reverse—paying to keep workers in their jobs instead of supporting them after they’re laid off. In Washington State, the program, known as work share, has paid dental technicians and plumbers at struggling companies. California wrote checks to construction workers when their employers couldn’t.