Agrium workers eligible for federal aid

Workers laid off from a fertilizer plan shuttered in Nikiski will be eligible for federal unemployment aid.

A U.S. Department of Labor official granted an appeal by Agrium Inc. and will give benefits known as trade adjustment assistance to 150 workers the company expects to lay off at its shuttered Nikiski fertilizer factory.

“It’s very good news,” Agrium spokeswoman Lisa Parker said Jan. 9. “It’s the only good news we’ve had.”

Agrium, based in Calgary, Alberta, shut down the plant Sept. 28.

Layoffs are expected to wrap up around June, Parker said.

The industrial process for making the fertilizer requires natural gas. A lack of cheap supplies from Cook Inlet gas fields forced the closure, Agrium representatives have said.

The Labor Department in October denied Agrium’s petition to make its Alaska employees eligible to apply for trade adjustment assistance. The department said U.S. imports of anhydrous ammonia and urea did not contribute significantly to loss of jobs at the plant, and that no shift in fertilizer production to a foreign country had occurred.

Labor Department certifying officer Elliott Kushner reversed that in a decision signed Jan. 8. Agrium determined that increases in fertilizer imports had “contributed importantly to the total or partial separation of workers and to the decline in sales or production” at Agrium’s Alaska factory.

All workers laid off since last April are eligible to apply for adjustment assistance for two years.

Shawna Harper, a program coordinator with Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in Juneau, said Agrium workers will be in line for job search and relocation allowances, wage subsidies for workers who might have to take lower-paying jobs, and help with paying health insurance premiums.

Agrium previously had won trade adjustment assistance for some workers in 2005, but that approval expired.

The state Department of Labor has set up a “transition center” in Kenai to help the Agrium workers, Harper said. According to Kushner’s ruling, the Agrium plant has “a significant number of workers” who are 50 or older and whose skills are “not easily transferable.”

—The Associated Press