AWI PROGRAMS
Trade Redjustment Allowances (TRA)(Trade Act of 2002)
Your TRA Eligibility Period:
If you qualify for TRA, you will have a 104-week eligibility period in which you can be paid TRA. This period will begin with the first week after you exhaust you regular unemployment insurance benefits. The maximum amount of TRA you may receive during this period is limited to 52 times you TRA weekly amount minus all unemployment insurance benefits which you were entitled to receive. For example, if you received 26 weeks of regular unemployment insurance benefits and 13 weeks of extended benefits, you may receive up to 13 weeks of TRA. You may, however, receive up to 26 additional weeks of TRA if you applied for training within 210 days of your first certification or, if later, within 210 days after the date of your total or partial separation from employment, and if such additional weeks are necessary for you to complete the approved training program.
Work Search Requirements:
In order to be eligible for TRA benefits, the law requires that you must be totally or partially unemployed, you must have exhausted al entitlement to any regular or extended unemployment compensation, you
Be enrolled in an approved training program (if appropriate), or you must make a systematic and sustained effort to obtain work, and submit a written record of your work seeing activities for each week claimed. A sustained search is a search for work conducted in a systematic manner every work day of each week by making personal contacts. This record should reflect all contacts made each day.
If you do not have a systematic and sustained search for work for any week claimed on TRA, you have the option of not claiming the week to avoid disqualification. You may withdraw your request at your local claims office.
Additionally, you may be required to accept any work which you are capable of performing.
You may be disqualified from receiving TRA benefits for refusing a job, refusing an appropriate training program, or for not actively seeking work. In either of these cases, you may be disqualified until you return to work for at least four weeks and earn at least four times your TRA weekly benefit amount.