Anchorage Daily News

Agrium Inc. has won its fight for federal unemployment aid for the 150 workers the company expects to lay off at its shuttered Nikiski fertilizer factory.

The U.S. Department of Labor last year had denied Agrium's application for the benefits known as trade adjustment assistance.

But the company, based in Calgary, Alberta, appealed and this week an officer with the Labor Department ruled in Agrium's favor.

"It's very good news," Agrium spokeswoman Lisa Parker said Wednesday. "It's the only good news we've had."

Agrium shut down the plant on Sept. 28 and is in the process of laying off its employees. Parker said the layoffs are expected to wrap up around June.

The industrial process for making the fertilizer requires tremendous volumes of natural gas, and a lack of cheap supplies from Cook Inlet's once-abundant 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 decision was based on a finding that 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.

But in a decision signed Tuesday, Labor Department certifying officer Elliott Kushner said Agrium had provided more information, and he 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.

Kushner ruled all workers at the plant laid off since last April are eligible to apply for adjustment assistance for two years from now.

Parker said Agrium told the Labor Department it is building a fertilizer plant in Egypt.

Agrium, which long has struggled to keep the Nikiski factory running, previously had won trade adjustment assistance for workers in 2005, but that approval expired.

Shawna Harper, a program coordinator with the state Department of Labor in Juneau, said the ruling opens the door to some very valuable benefits for Agrium workers, including job search and relocation allowances, wage subsidies for workers who might have to take lower-paying jobs, and help with paying health insurance premiums.

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."

Find Wesley Loy online at adn.com/contact/wloy or call 257-4590.

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