WELFARE

WELFARE-TO-WORK
(Or Modern Indentured Servitude?)

by Linda M. Crannell

PHS Commentary # 4

(The Poorhouse Lady)

9/14/2003

You MUST go to work!

But I can't find a job!
(at even minimum wage)

You MUST go to work!

But I can't find a job!
(that's anywhere near my home)

(to be continued after intermission)

No one doubts the wisdom of the fact that if you give a man a fish he eats for a day -- and if you teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime. So designing our attempts to alleviate poverty around a desire to help those who need "welfare" become employed is both humane and practical. But a sincere desire to do this requires that our public policy address the real issues in our economy which are restricting employment opportunities. To simply decree that people are no longer eligible for assistance after two years cruelly ignores two facts.

Many people are simply not capable of doing much productive work -- the severely handicapped, the chronically ill, and many frail or unskilled elderly. (We have seen that this was disregarded in much 18th century poorhouse planning which incorrectly assumed that the majority of those who needed support could do enough work to make the poor farms self-supporting.)

But an even more alarming fact involves requiring people to work at minimum wage (or lower!) and without any of the benefits which until recently provided the "safety net" which ended the need for poorhouses when the original Social Security Act was passed. Not only does this make "working poor" of them -- but it lowers the wages of those who might receive better wages if they did not have to compete with a growing pool of those "willing" to work for such appallingly low wages.

In 1996 a "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act"
(Welfare Reform Law) was passed. That law imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits. And, under that law, most adult recipients of public aid are required to go to work after receiving benefits for 2 years -- or benefits cease.

That work requirement was easier to mandate than it was to accomplish ...
even during the "prosperous" 90s!

So on May 20, 1997 a public/private program was established to encourage and assist private companies to successfully hire, retain and promote welfare recipients and other unemployed and low-income workers. The founding companies were Burger King, Monsanto, Sprint, United Airlines and UPS -- but more than 20,000 businesses (75% of them having 250 or few employees) -- now participate.

One of those companies happens to be:
Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill.

<<< Yes, this is what is known as a SEGUE !

One of the most emotional sections of Michael Moore's Academy Award winning movie, Bowling for Columbine, relates the story of the shooting & killing of a 6 year old girl by a 6 year old boy in a school near Michael's hometown on February 29, 2000.

While there has been a great deal of controversy over Michael's criticism of the role in this tragedy of the WtW program's employment of this mother at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill and simultaneously at another job in the same program ... still it must give us pause to reflect:
Who benefits more from this program? The employers who gain huge tax benefits from employing welfare recipients at very low wages or families deprived of adult supervision for 11 or 12 hours a day?

"We watched Bowling for Columbine the other night and a tie in with a previous article I wrote became clear. As Michael Moore delved more fully into the shooting in Mount Morris Township, Mich ... we learn the single mother of the boy was forced to participate in the Welfare to Work program to pay back her 'debt to society'. In order to earn a few dollars over minimum wage, she was bused into the city (80 miles round trip) and worked 2 jobs.

...{D]espite the two jobs, she was unable to support herself and her child. As she was being evicted from her home, she and her son stayed with her brother. It was there that her son gained access to the gun, while his mother was away all day trying, but not succeeding, to make ends meet.

Perhaps if his mother could have spent more time at home, this tragedy could have been prevented. Certainly being away from home nearly all the time and still losing everything you own did not help the situation. In the end, no one wins: the little girl is dead, her family devastated, the boy must live with his crime, the mother is evicted and her family decimated, her brother is sentenced two to 15 years in prison for allowing the boy access to the gun, and the community is ripped apart.

This is certainly not the story that the politicians want us to hear...or Rodney J. Carroll, President and CEO of the Welfare to Work Partnership, who just recently released a book entitled "No Free Lunch: One Man's Journey from Welfare to the American Dream". I think most people in the WtW program are not living the dream...just making it possible for others by providing the cheap, short-term and benefit-less labor necessary to sustain our society."

posted on wintermute.weblog 11/04/2002

Inherent in this welfare requirement that recipients go to work after no more than two years receiving benefits, is a definition of "work" as only paid employment outside the home. No one for a moment seems to consider that those who need such assistance may actually be working at home already. Consideration of the rearing of children as worthwhile work seems reserved for only middle-class (or more fortunate) stay-at-home parents. They, it should be noted, are respected enough to be able to earn Social Security credits and pay into IRA accounts based on the value of such parenting and homemaking work.

Recipe for JOBLESSNESS

Ingredients:
(click on links for further description of these ingredients)

high unemployment (6.4% per Labor Dept.by June 2003; worst in 9 years)
very low minimum wage ($5.15 per hour, national since 1997)
[Federal inaction forces states to raise wage floor to protect low-wage workers]
employers sending jobs out of the country
(click link to view summary of Job Flight segment from "NOW with Bill Moyers")
decreasing educational/training programs
severe shortage of affordable safe & nurturing childcare services
inadequate or absent public transportation

to modify recipe to produce TOTAL SOCIAL DISASTER
add these ingredients:

increasing reliance on contract labor without any "benefits"
[unemployment compensation, workmen's compensation, health insurance]
rapidly dwindling government funds available for social services
[affordable housing, health care, transportation]

Note:

Add to this mixture

allowing employers to reclassify entry level jobs as "training"
exempting on-the-job training from minimum wage requirements
requiring people to work under these conditions
-- or be totally destitute

and you have the ultimate recipe for
INVOLUNTARY INDENTURED SERVITUDE