Congressman Artur Davis Writes Open Letter To Meadowcraft Employees

Letter

Washington

To the Employees and Management of Meadowcraft Inc.,

In the past few days, my congressional offices have been contacted by a number of employees at the Meadowcraft plant who are fearful of losing their jobs. Your growing and understandable frustrations are not falling on deaf ears. I fully understand the importance of this facility and recognize that the current recession has put it in jeopardy.

On April 23rd I met with senior Meadowcraft officials in my Washington office and members of my staff have continued this dialogue. We have encouraged Meadowcraft management to continue their vigorous efforts to prevent the loss of any additional employee jobs or benefits. I would also urge the management of Meadowcraft to advise workers of a variety of new options for assistance contained in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also known as the stimulus package). Those programs include:

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation, a program which provides up to 33 weeks of federally-funded extended unemployment benefits.

The most extensive effort ever to help unemployed workers maintain healthcare coverage, which provides a 65% subsidy for up to nine months for COBRA premiums for those who became unemployed between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009.

An increase in the cash amount of weekly unemployment benefits. ARRA provides funds to temporarily increase every recipient's check by $25 a week, providing nearly an additional $1,000 for an individual unemployed for the remainder of this year.

This company, at one time, employed more than 1200 people in the Birmingham, Wadley, and Selma area and it is my hope that it will not become another casualty of this recession. While there is no federal law that permits the government to help Meadowcraft directly, I will continue to make sure that anything that can be done to help the current and former employees of Meadowcraft will be done. I encourage them as well as anyone else to contact my office regarding resources that are available.

Sincerely,
Congressman Artur Davis

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