About 200 Supervalu employees — laid off when the company was partly sold off — will be eligible for a new $830,390 job training grant from the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Labor Tuesday announced the "national emergency grant," which will be awarded to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). HIRED, a Twin Cities workforce development group, will operate the training program, which allows workers to upgrade job skills or retrain for new careers.
Eden Prairie-based Supervalu in March announced it would eliminate 600 jobs in Minnesota, mostly by slashing its headquarters workforce by 38 percent. The job cuts were announced just days after Supervalu completed the $3.3 billion sale of its four largest grocery chains.
The federal grant is "extra funding" for Minnesota's dislocated worker program, said Anthony Alongi, director of DEED's dislocated worker program. That program is primarily funded by the state, but DEED will occasionally apply for emergency federal grants to handle larger layoffs.
The state program has sufficient funding to handle retraining of Supervalu workers beyond the 200 covered by the federal grant, Alongi said.
MIKE HUGHLETT
