Stop Gap Employment Policy - Washington State Board for

Worker Retraining Program
Stop Gap Employment
Stop Gap Employment – New in 2014-2015
Intent: This policy has been developed to ensure students who are dislocated workers and who
have secured stop-gap employment, as defined below, may be determined eligible for worker
retraining enrollment and able to receive funding and support in order to re-engage with the
workforce in livable wage jobs.
Authority: This policy was recommended by the Workforce Training Customer Advisory
Committee and approved by the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. Colleges
must create local policy that defines the criteria that will be used to validate eligibility under the
stop gap employment category.
Definition of Stop Gap Employment
Stop-gap employment is temporary work an individual accepts only because they have been
laid off of work or otherwise terminated from employment due to no fault of their own from the
customary work for which their training, experience or work history qualifies them. Stop-gap
employment must be temporary in nature with the intent to end employment upon the
completion of training, obtaining self-sufficient employment as specified in the individual
education plan.
Typically, stop-gap employment will pay less than the individual’s wage of self-sufficiency.
However, there may be specific circumstances where stop-gap employment does provide a
sufficient wage temporarily but is not considered, or intended to be, permanent employment
that leads to long-term self-sufficiency.
Definition of Stop Gap Employment WRT Student Eligibility:
Colleges are required to establish a local policy that outlines the eligibility requirements that
will be used to determine and document student eligibility. College policies must be in
alignment with the definition of Stop Gap Employment outlined above. It should be noted that
dislocated and unemployed students have priority for WRT services and financial aid.
Colleges may base their determination on any of the following:
 Lower living standard income level as defined in determining that the student’s income
does not exceed 175 percent of the federal poverty levels.
 A certain percentage of the wages earned at the time of dislocation
 An evaluation of the individual’s self-sufficiency utilizing the Washington State SelfSufficiency Calculator to establish student need
August 2014
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Worker Retraining Program
Stop Gap Employment
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A definition of temporary employment (e.g. duration) and scenarios where temporary
employment alone can verify that employment will not lead to self-sufficiency.
A multi-tiered evaluation of labor market demand, wages at time of dislocation, number
of hours worked, unemployment benefits and job of dislocation.
The policy must clearly identify the type(s) of documentation which will be maintained in the
student file to prove eligibility at the time of enrollment.
Coding: Students meeting stop gap employment eligibility may be enrolled with the work
attend code 81 – Dislocated Worker (formerly short –tenured) with unusual action code “W!”
This policy does not require that college’s revisit the student’s eligibility determination code
after initial enrollment.
Colleges using work attend 81 should remove the code from the student’s record when the
student ceases to meet the criteria as listed above.
August 2014
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