The piece that follows my comments appeared in the New York Times. It isn't on the Times Web Site now, so I pass it along. I think it represents the shape of things to come vis a vis welfare reform generally.
There's a distinction drawn by people interviewed in the piece between workfare jobs and "employment." This is one of those silly illusions that will have to disappear if we're ever going to survive welfare "reform" without turning the entire country into a Dickens novel.
Since this point seems to elude most people debating welfare reform, I will put it obnoxious capital letters --IN MOST AREAS OF THE COUNTRY, NEITHER THE PRIVATE SECTOR NOR GOVERNMENT WILL HAVE ENOUGH JOBS TO HIRE EVERYONE NOW ON WELFARE. Here in Philadelphia, there are between 60,000 and 70,000 heads-of-households on welfare who will be entering the labor market over the next five years. There are now already 57,000 people who are officially *unemployed*. The City continues to lose jobs. So where are all these people supposed to find "unsubsidized" work?
The standard for workfare assumed by many people in thes Times article is that it is supposed to help people get "real" jobs-- that is, jobs that aren't financed by welfare payments. Uh huh. These *real* jobs don't exist. Welfare recipients will either do these community jobs or they won't work at all. When Jeremy Rifkin lays out this scenario for the entire society in "The End of Work," he's seen as a visionary. Well--here's the vision, folks, brought to you by the Personal Responsibility Act of 1996.
There is, of course, a new doublespeak associated with all this.
In the 1980's, the conservatives saw to it that the federal government would not support the construction of something called "public housing." So what do we have now? Homeless "shelters" and "transitional housing." It's just lousy public housing for people who don't "deserve" any better.
Now we're going to kick people off of welfare and pretend that there's some sort of job market waiting to hire them. But in Wisconsin and in New Jersey, the states are aleady subsidizing people to work at the sort of jobs described in Westchester Country.
So here's the doublespeak on this one:
CETA--A nasty public service jobs program of the 1970's that produced "makework" jobs at high pay and decent benefits for the unemployed, that was "big government" at its worst.
Workfare--A needed public service jobs program to make sure that those good-for-nothing welfare recipients do something to *deserve* the subsistence payments that they now receive.
Various segments of the welfare community are now fighting a rear guard action to restore some aspects of welfare. Even Clinton's proposal to add $13 billion to the welfare "reform" budget seems to emphasize providing welfare to legal immigrants and restoring food stamps to people who are about to lose them.
These efforts are needed, but they miss the basic point...We need PUBLIC funds for JOBS that welfare recipients can perform. This will be the only alternative to thousands of women and children lying in the streets. The battleground facing us revolves around what recipients will do, how much they'll be paid to do it, and what sort of education and training for upgrading job skills will accompany the work. A second battleground--for all of us--will revolve around the sort of services that we need in our communities to help kids while both parents are working. This future is here. We need to start talking in these terms NOW-- not two years from now, when every major city in this country is going to look like Calcutta.
The Institute for the Study of Civic Values has been running an Alternative Work Experience Program for three years, as our own answer to this problem..even before welfare "reform" became a reality. You can access an online report on our program from this ISCV "Welfare Reform" page.
But this New York Times piece is an important snapshot of what we're all facing right now, even if most people don't want to face up to it.
Workfare in Westchester County
New York Times: December 2, 1996
Workfare Model Leaves Many Unanswered Questions
By JOSEPH BERGER
GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- In the gloomy shadows of a highway overpass, six men were working off their welfare checks.
Two vigorously raked the leaves and broken glass that had gathered along the pillars supporting Interstate 287. The others idled on the sidewalk, glad for the overpass' shelter against a fall rainstorm.
One idle worker, Felton Jenkins, was annoyed that his workfare assignment has "got too much demands."
"They demand we have to be here at a certain time, and if we're not, we have to bring in a note," said Jenkins, a trim 32-year-old who once worked as a health aide but quit and went on welfare because he did not like commuting. "People who have regular jobs don't have to bring in notes."
But even those working hard brooded about the pointlessness of sprucing up a highway overpass.
"They say they teach you," said Elvin Santana, 42, who was once paid $12 an hour as a roofer. "Teach you what? How to sweep? Anybody can do that."
The Westchester County workfare program has become a national model by sharply cutting welfare rolls and putting more than 15,000 welfare recipients to work since 1989. It has forced welfare recipients to do something to earn their checks, and that may be all the public expects.
Yet even with so many things in its favor -- a highly regarded administrator, good labor relations, a strong network of nonprofit groups lending support --Westchester's program is still dogged by many of the complaints and problems that have surfaced in newer programs in New York City and around the nation. And as New York City and the state accelerate their use of workfare, Westchester's experience offers telling clues of the pitfalls of a program that has proven politically popular.
Because of union resistance, Westchester's Pride in Work program is forced to offer nonessential work that provides little preparation for the job market.
Indeed, based on Westchester's experience, there is little evidence so far that workfare leads to the steady jobs its champions promise.
And any hope of putting large numbers of recipients to work is shadowed by the fact that many recipients have had habitual personal difficulties holding jobs. Moreover, the recipients complain that workfare interferes with the time they need to look for jobs.
Thus, interviews with government officials, advocates for the poor and welfare recipients suggest that it may be difficult to realize the lofty ambitions of the new federal welfare law, which backers say will redeem hundreds of thousands of welfare clients and prepare them for the world of work. That is a world most recipients will have to enter under the five-year limit on benefits in the new law.
Officials in Westchester, which in comparison to New York City has a lean and highly regarded bureaucracy, have found it is tricky to find constructive tasks for the welfare recipients to do for 20 hours a week, the maximum demanded by workfare rules.
State law does not let workfare participants work for private for-profit employers, so they must work for the counties, cities and villages or for nonprofit organizations like the YMCA. Even in the public arena, assignments are those the civil service workers consider optional, like cleaning an overpass.
"You can't sacrifice the rest of the population because you want to help people on welfare," said Eddie Doyle, president of Local 456 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents workers in 35 Westchester municipalities.
Many of those asked to work, advocates for the poor say, lack the temperament, work habits or basic literacy demanded by business or government.
"Most of this population is unemployable," said Jerrold Levy, a lawyer for Westchester-Putnam Legal Services, a legal aid group. "They're coming from foster homes, they dropped out in the eighth or ninth grade, they've been fired."
Levy said he thought workfare was basically intended to shave the welfare rolls of cheats and malingerers. It forces those working off the books to show up at workfare jobs and punishes able-bodied people who miss assignments with suspension of their welfare checks for 90 to 180 days.
Because of its success in trimming welfare rolls, Westchester's program has been imitated or studied by New York City, seven upstate counties, and jurisdictions as distant as Michigan and Ontario.
Mary Glass, Westchester's social service commissioner, says that since 1989, the program has garnered the equivalent of $12.1 million in labor by requiring 15,725 welfare recipients to work.
As important, 20,658 cases of Home Relief -- the welfare program for childless adults -- have been closed, 60 percent of them permanently, because people refused workfare assignments or did not show up for work.
She bristles when she hears sentiments like Levy's that most recipients cannot work.
"It's so demeaning, patronizing and paternalistic to say that people don't have the ability to hold a job," she said.
Pride in Work, Glass said, is putting 748 childless adults to work at 177 sites. They are filing paperwork, cleaning trash along rivers, cooking and painting. The county has been able to put only 160 women with dependent children to work because it has little money to spare for day care.
Still, the success of Pride in Work in steering people into the job market is an open question. The county keeps no information about how many graduates have gone on to steady jobs.
Ms. Glass said that most people who find jobs feel no obligation to let the county know, sometimes because their new jobs are off the books. The county has also never done a survey tracking where its workfare graduates go.
Officials of the nine cities and towns that employ workfare participants say, however, that only a handful of assignments have ever resulted in permanent jobs.
"It's cheap labor that generally does not result in employment," said Paul Feiner, the town supervisor in Greenburgh, which uses 10 workfare workers. "You may have someone who's really good, and it would be nice if someone could land a job, but it doesn't happen. We don't have any turnover in municipal jobs."
Even one of the most highly regarded workfare programs, run by Westhab Inc., a nonprofit housing agency that operates a residence for employed Home Relief recipients in White Plains, said that in the first 10 months of 1996, only 25 of the 80 men who passed through the residence found steady work.
Ms. Glass, the architect of the county's program, feels that what is important is that anyone receiving a welfare check be made to work. Not working, she said, is "like existential death."
Ms. Glass does not foresee difficulties when the new welfare law expands workfare to include mothers. Gov. George Pataki's welfare plan calls for spending $383 million to create day care openings.
"Go out and look at all of the things you're never going to get to," Ms. Glass said. "People say: 'Why can't you get rid of the graffiti?' 'Why can't you get rid of the garbage?"'
Westchester maintains a small program to teach 60 of the most promising workfare participants how to present themselves to employers. So far, only 38 of 248 participants this year have found jobs as a result of those sessions.
To be sure, workfare has enjoyed some shimmering successes.
At the YMCA in Yonkers, Diane Wrencher is off welfare and working full time as office manager for the Y's energetic director, Gregory Du Sablon. She joined the Y in December 1995 under the Pride in Work program and soon proved more proficient than Du Sablon's full-time employees.
In August, Du Sablon hired her as his office manager and now pays her $280 a week.
The 50-year-old Ms. Wrencher, though, has a solid work history, having worked for many years as teller for National Westminster Bank.
Du Sablon said he had used 40 to 50 people from the workfare program, with mixed results. Three of every four have either been dismissed or had their checks suspended by the county's Social Services Department.
"Some have stolen a TV and VCR from us, some have done bad things and left us," he said. "They don't call and don't come in. You can be overly trusting."
But 17 are working there now, staffing the front desk, helping maintain the aged building, and doling out food in the Y's food pantry.
Under state law, welfare recipients cannot work off their checks for private employers, not even a McDonald's that might use someone's stint to evaluate prospects for permanent hiring. The state is wary of subsidizing one businessman at the expense of another, officials said.
Lawrence Mead, a professor of politics at New York University who has written two books on welfare employment policy, said that New York State is almost alone in the country in barring private workfare.
As a result, county officials have little room to maneuver in the jobs they assign. The possibilities for tensions with civil service unions are likely to multiply once the state, under the new federal law, has to find jobs or train an estimated 1,700 women.
The 61 men at the Westhab employment residence must work off their checks by picking up garbage along the Bronx River Parkway, cutting grass and shoveling snow at the county hospital or cleaning the grounds of the Westhab residence.
The opportunity to stay at the residence, considered a Waldorf among homeless shelters, motivates the men to work.
But residents like Sylvester Williamson, 22, and Reginald Applewhite, 39, are not entirely pleased with the jobs they are asked to do. Whatever hopes they have for eventual employment are riding on cooking classes they are taking in Yonkers, not on workfare.
"It teaches you to get up in the morning, take a shower and get on the van to go to work," Williamson said of workfare. "But the work you do is not going to guarantee you a regular job. If you're raking leaves, it builds character, but you're still raking those leaves."
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