Laid-off HCL America employees eligible for benefits

Idaho workers laid off by HCL America Inc. because their jobs were shifted overseas may be eligible for re-employment services under the federal Trade Act (TAA), according to the Idaho Department of Labor.

The U.S. Department of Labor certified a TAA petition for HCL America – Idaho workers on April 14. Employment services available to the workers have specific eligibility and time requirements (including wage and employment qualifications) that must be met.

What is HCL America?

HCL America Inc. provides consulting and information technology services in North America. It is a subsidiary of HCL Technologies Limited, an India-based, multinational information technology service and consulting company headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. HCL America Inc. provides application services in the areas of customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, IT infrastructure, and business process outsourcing. Workers in Idaho who were supplying engineering, research and development services, and digital process operations were laid off due to an out-of-country shift in services. Layoffs took place nationwide.

It is not known how many Idaho employees the company had or how many were laid off.

Former or current workers eligible to apply must be or have been engaged in the supply of engineering, research and development and digital process operation, and need to have completely or partially been laid off between Dec. 24, 2019 and April 14, 2023, the department said in a statement.

What the TAA program provides

Employment services offered under TAA include:

• Training allowances
• Job search allowances
• Trade readjustment allowances – the deadline to apply is within 26 weeks from the employee’s layoff date or petition certification date (April 14, 2021), whichever is later
• Relocation – for new employment opportunities outside of the employee’s local labor market
• Reemployment trade adjustment assistance – for workers aged 50 and older and making $50,000 or less in new employment
• Health coverage tax credits – to help pay for monthly health insurance premiums

Workers must file a Trade Request for Determination of Entitlement form, available on Labor’s HCL America Inc. webpage, as soon as possible. Fax it to (208) 947-0049 or email it.

How the TAA program works

The TAA program provides services and benefits to workers who lose their jobs because of increased imports or because their employer shifted production or services to certain countries outside the United States. It is a federal program administered by the Idaho Department of Labor.

The company itself, a state agency, a union or affected employees file a petition for consideration under the program. Once the petition is received, the company is contacted to determine the impact. If the petition is accepted, it is assigned a date of impact, typically a three-year period dating one year back from certification and two years forward, where people could qualify for services.

Even people laid off in the past who received new employment could be eligible for the services, if the layoff fell within the impact period.

Employers don’t have to pay for the program. The program is funded by a Congressional appropriation to the U.S. Department of Labor, which administers the program and distributes funding to the states.

Previous instances of TAA in Idaho

A similar action took place in 2020 when employees of some 30 subcontractors laid off from HP’s Imaging, Printing and Solutions Business Group in Boise were deemed eligible for federal employment services because the jobs moved overseas.

HP employees separated between June 27, 2018, and April 20, 2022, are also eligible to apply for the services through the Idaho Department of Labor.

HP had announced in October 2019 that it intended to lay off from 7,000 to 9,000 employees worldwide by the end of 2022 but didn’t say how many would come from Boise.

Other Boise-based companies have also filed petitions under the program, such as Micron, which was certified for 500 employees on December 28, 2018, and MotivePower, which was denied for 220 employees on April 28, 2020.