• For workers who find themselves laid-off, the Economic Dislocation and Worker Adjustment Assistant Act of 1988 provides federal funds for basic retraining. Why not learn some higher-paying skills on Uncle Sam's dime?
  
• The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 says that employers with 100 or more workers have to give a 60 day advance notice that the plant is going to close or that there are going to be mass layoffs.

More information about any of these laws--and others that this story didn't even mention--can be found at the NELA website or in Working Stiff's own resource guide. Tracking down the ins and outs of the various laws can be frustrating, so Runkel suggests getting a lawyer if you think you have a claim. "That's the one person in town who has a grip on the whole thing," he says.

Exerting your rights--and improving your workplace--really comes down to a willingness to take action, he adds. "Individuals have to educate themselves, then they have to decide, are they going to do something about it? Are they going to phone the proper government agency, phone a lawyer, or form a union? These things don't happen just by wanting them to happen, though we wish they would."