by Ray Goforth
Free Press Contributor
There have been many significant changes that have occurred in the American economy since the early 1970's. Taken collectively, these changes are often referred to as the birth of the post-industrial economy. One of the ways in which our society has chosen to deal with the resulting stresses of this massive change in the labor market has been to devolve social welfare programs from the federal government to the individual states. In August 1996, President Clinton signed a welfare reform law that inter-alia abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with a new "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families" (TANF) block grant program to the states.Under the TANF regime, states have a great deal of freedom over how to structure their welfare programs. However, every program must contain a workfare provision that requires aid recipients to participate in "community service" within two months of receiving benefits and to be working within two years. TANF recipients are currently required to work 20 hours per week (increasing to 25 in 1998 and 30 in 2000).
Workfare participants are not actually paid a wage but instead continue to receive their welfare benefits in exchange for fulfilling their required work allotment. As a result, the workfare "wage equivalent" varies depending upon the size of the welfare grant (which vary state by state) and the required work hours (the federal guidelines constitute a floor, not a ceiling upon how many hours can be required).
From Welfare to Low Wages
The TANF guidelines do not define whether workfare participants are "employees" when placed in "work activities." As a consequence, it is entirely unclear what workplace protections those on workfare enjoy. For example, some states have paid workfare participants the minimum wage while others have not. Some states have recognized the right of workfare participants to join unions while others have denied this right.
Previous welfare laws explicitly stated whether recipients were covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage). The 1996 welfare bill signed by President Clinton failed to do so. This omission gave birth to an array of different payment levels for TANF workfare participants that ranged from decent-but-low pay to a post-industrial indentured servitude wage equivalent to 96 cents an hour. In May 1997, the White House announced that workfare participants should receive the minimum wage but many states have expressed their intention not to comply until directed to do so by the courts. Congressional Republicans are said to have drafted a minimum-wage exception for workfare participants which they will attempt to pass as soon as possible.
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Hadie Hartgrove of Nassau County, NY was laid off from her job and had to go on welfare. Her Workfare assignment turned out to be her old job. |
Even if workfare participants can form and join unions, it is still unclear just what bargaining rights those unions hold. Because workfare participants are paid with a welfare check, union organizers are uncertain if they can bargain over wages. The only successful organizing actions to date have concerned working conditions. In New York City, the Parks Department has refused to provide gloves, coats and sanitary facilities to its 5000 workfare workers. The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation assigned workfare participants to handle biological and toxic waste without training or safety gloves. Not surprisingly, ACORN has persuaded 6500 of New York's 35,000 workfare participants to sign union authorization cards. In Los Angeles, organized (but not unionized) workfare workers performing janitorial work at County-USC Hospital protested working conditions and won new uniforms and an employee discount at the hospital cafeteria. The Alaskan AFSCME won its workfare members increased training and pledges to move them into permanent government jobs.
'Sticking With the Union'?
As the TANF program currently stands, workfare constitutes a direct assault upon the balance of power between management and labor in the United States. Congress has created a new class of worker who is all but exempt from the protections afforded others and is (probably) legally prohibited from organizing to better their lot.
Many governments have already taken advantage of workfare to displace their regular low-wage workforce. The city of Baltimore has replaced an estimated 1000 regular workers with workfare "trainees" who earn less than the minimum wage. The Baltimore public school system alone has 208 "custodial trainees" who earn the equivalent of $1.50 an hour. Johns Hopkins University only reversed its plan to replace union workers with workfare participants after protests that drew crowds of more than 1000 people.
Perversely, the displacement of regular low-wage workers with workfare participants has the effect of recycling workers back into the TANF welfare program. Those workers who currently hold low-wage jobs but are not on welfare may find themselves replaced by workfare participants and forced on welfare themselves. Those workfare participants who manage to find "real work" (non-workfare) will be constantly menaced by the possibility that they too might be replaced by a cheap and docile workfare participant.
Such a dilemma befell Hadie Hartgrove who was laid-off from her part-time custodial job with the Naussau County, NY government. As a result, she ended up on welfare. Ironically, Ms. Hartgrove's workfare assignment turned out to be her old job, with far less pay and no benefits.
Why Pay More When There's Workfare?
As so often happens in the world outside of Congressional strategy sessions, the Workfare program has had the opposite effect of what it was intended to accomplish. Rather than empower welfare recipients to learn job skills and find a productive niche in our economy, it has created a class of Americans who are forced to work for sub-minimum-wage, are denied the right to organize, and may not enjoy the benefits of still other employee protections available to the rest of the American workforce.
Moreover, the institutionally created disabilities upon workfare participants have negative spill-over effects upon other workers.
The availability of a sub-minimum-wage labor pool will undoubtedly have a stabilizing if not depressing effect upon wages for comparable positions that as of yet are not filled by workfare participants. Unionized employers may not feel the same compulsion to bargain with their workers knowing that there is a bottomless pool of "trainees" who they can draw upon. And as noted previously, some employers are simply eliminating union jobs in favor of workfare trainees. The current workfare program assaults both the dignity and human rights of the workfare participants and should be an embarrassment to every American.
Ray Goforth, a UW law student and activist, is editor and publisher of the Social Justice E-Zine, a Seattle-based electronic magazine available on the internet. This editorial was from the June, 1997 issue. Subscriptions are available from goforth@igc.apc.org. Back issues are archived at the above linked website.
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Contents this page were published in the September/October, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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