Lisa Pineau, a 46-year-old unemployed mainframe programmer in Plano, Texas, is another plaintiff in the lawsuit. She would like to use the TAA benefits to retrain in another field, such as nursing. "Everyone I know has gone from making $30 or $40 an hour to making $10 an hour, and it's impossible for our economy to survive that kind of loss," she says. "In Plano, the foreclosure rate is one of the highest in the nation in the last year, because there are so many people who have been laid off."

In the initial complaint, filed in the United States Court of International Trade on Friday, Jan. 2, 2004, plaintiff's attorney Smith makes his case for why software is in fact legally a so-called article. But he also makes a larger point: "In the current economic environment of large 'structural changes' to the U.S. economy in which possibly millions of software workers will lose their work to foreign competition, providing determinations of eligibility to software workers for TRA [trade readjustment allowance] benefits will clearly satisfy Congress's intent to 'improve the economy, and assist workers.'"

Fusco, who is now reemployed as a systems analyst at a substantial pay cut, sees the case in those terms, too: "I believe that tech workers are entitled to the same protections of the trade act as any other workers," he says. "If they've lost their jobs due to competition with foreign countries, then they should be entitled to the same benefits as anybody else." A spokesperson for the Department of Justice had no comment.

When it comes to computer programmers, the Department of Labor has already proven itself inconsistent. Smith knows of more than 40 cases where programmers have been ruled ineligible to receive TAA assistance, and at least five where they have been deemed eligible. He says he's received no explanation for the difference in status.

As the public debate about the costs and benefits of offshoring jobs heats up, some economists believe that domestic workers could benefit from insurance, so that their standard of living doesn't immediately plummet if a job loss forces them to take new jobs that pay less.

"There are many reasons why jobs are becoming less secure," says Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor under the Clinton administration. "If we don't want to simply protect the old jobs through legislation that bans outsourcing or erect tariffs and quotas that prevents technology from advancing, we've got to get serious about some ways to cushion people from the difficulty that they face because of job insecurity. Wage insurance is one way."

The TAA already has limited wage insurance built into it to benefit workers over 50 who qualify. Kletzer, the California economics professor, explains the concept this way: "Think of it as the mirror image of unemployment insurance. Wage insurance doesn't start until you've found the new job. If the new job pays less than your old job, wage insurance will partially close the gap."

While the data isn't in yet for technology workers, Kletzer says when manufacturing workers lose their jobs, about half take a pay cut with their new position. "It's not that hard for workers to find a new job. It's the wages of the new job that are the cost," says Kletzer. "The cost is really not the time it takes to find a new job. It's not really that new jobs are difficult to find. It's that workers tend to find jobs that pay less."

As it is currently conceived under TAA, wage insurance only applies to workers over the age of 50, since they're most likely to take the greatest hit if they are forced to go into a new field so close to retirement.

The idea is that even though the government cannot afford to permanently subsidize the wages of a worker whose earnings have plunged from $40 an hour to $10 an hour, it can afford to ease the blow, temporarily.

The key question is how to pay for extended benefits. Reich suggests that changes in the current payroll tax structure could cover the costs of such a program, not just for workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition, but for all workers. But he concedes no such program is likely to be enacted under the current Congress.

Labor activists are far from united on the issue of wage insurance, however. Marcus Courtney, an organizer for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, thinks focusing too much on ameliorating the fallout from outsourcing is not the answer: "We have got to start changing the policies in place that let companies export the jobs we have, instead of saying we're going to provide wage insurance and retraining for everyone."

Still, Pineau, the programmer in Plano, sounds like someone who might benefit from such wage insurance, were she in fact eligible for it. She says that since her $32-an-hour job was offshored to Canada for half that wage, she and many other former tech workers she knows in Plano are now applying for "McJobs" that pay $10 an hour.

"Maybe we should be happy to make $10 an hour, but when you have a mortgage and kids, and your expenses are already at $40, it's hard to immediately go from $40 to $10."

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