[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 52 (Friday, May 1, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E733-E735]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 PART 1: JOBS WITH JUSTICE FIRST NATIONAL WORKERS' RIGHTS BOARD HEARING

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 30, 1998

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend the Jobs With 
Justice coalition, a national organization of community, labor and 
religious groups that is dedicated to fighting for the rights of 
working people. When it was established in 1989, Jobs With Justice set 
out to create a grassroots network of local affiliates that were 
willing and able to take action on difficult issues such as fair wages, 
union organizing rights, and the impact of international trade policies 
on jobs. This dynamic organization has been the driving force behind 
local and state initiatives for living wage jobs, leading to measures 
such as the Living Wage Ordinance passed by the City Council of 
Portland, Oregon.
  In addition, Jobs With Justice has started a growing network of 
Workers Rights Boards (WRB) that lend strategic support to unorganized 
workers who are striving for justice and fairness on the job. The 
boards are composed of local labor, religious, political and community 
leaders who lend their time to learning about the abuses that working 
people too often suffer at the hands of unscrupulous employers. These 
Workers Rights Boards are truly an example of grass roots democracy in 
action.
  Jobs With Justice convened its ``First National Workers' Rights Board 
Hearing on Welfare/Workfare Issues'' in Chicago in 1997. This hearing 
featured a number of community, labor and political leaders. I include 
their testimony for the Congressional Record. Part 1 of this statement 
includes: Brooks Sunkett of the Communications Workers of America 
(CWA); Josie Mooney of the Service Employees International Union 
(SEIU); and David Roth of Cleveland Works.

           Brooks Sunkett, Communications Workers of America

       Mr. Chairman, Board Members, and most importantly, social 
     justice advocates.
       I am very honored to come before you today and express my 
     deep concern over workfare and welfare privatization upon

[[Page E734]]

     working Americans and the most needy of our society.
       Fortunately for all of you, the time constraints of today's 
     agenda will not allow me to completely cover these issues, in 
     depth as I usually do. But, I will briefly elaborate upon 
     these very real problems.
       My opinion of workfare has always been very clear. To me it 
     is little more than institutionalized slavery. I realize that 
     is a very strong statement, but I feel it is nonetheless 
     accurate. I can think of no better statement to drive home 
     the point that workfare will eventually drive down the wages, 
     and force working Americans to do more work for less pay.
       Although I am not an economist, one need not have a degree 
     in economics to realize that flooding the workforce with 
     millions of people working for less than a living wage, will 
     ultimately erode the standard wage of thousands of jobs.
       Those of us in labor who have fought for decades to improve 
     the working lives and livelihoods of the American worker, 
     face the very real possibility of seeing the improvements 
     made through thousands of struggles and hardships simply melt 
     away.
       As sad as this is, it gets worse, because this is not just 
     an organized labor problem. All workers, union and nonunion, 
     will suffer the effects of widespread workfare programs.
       Anyone who honestly believes that workfare will not affect 
     him, his job, his wages or even his taxes, is fooling 
     himself. Just ask Hattie Hartgrove, a Nassau County New York 
     employee. Hattie was laid-off from her part-time job as a 
     custodian due to budget cuts. Soon after going on welfare 
     Hattie was assigned to the same job in the same department to 
     work off her benefits at lower pay with no benefits.
       Stories like Hattie's are fairly unique because the strong 
     economy currently allows for many would-be workfare 
     participants to move into real jobs. Additionally, many 
     states have been slow to develop much more than pilot 
     workfare programs. They are struggling with the contradiction 
     of providing worker protections for participants, and the 
     potentially enormous cost of such programs when the economy 
     slows down. Although few will admit it, many States already 
     realize that workfare is no panacea.
       It is imperative that we not let the effects of our 
     temporarily strong economy, and the still relatively high 
     TANF benefits, lull us into a false sense of security.
       If workfare programs expand like conservative congressmen 
     hope, many working Americans will not know what hit them when 
     the economy turns down, and the TANF funding dries up.
       For at exactly the time when people will need help the 
     most, that is when the most negative effect of workfare will 
     peak.
       Workfare is bad enough, but welfare privatization adds 
     insult to injury. If State governments are allowed to sell 
     out on their responsibility, the needs of millions will go 
     unmet. In Texas alone, where we have fought, and continue to 
     fight against privatization, 2.5 million medicaid recipients 
     will be negatively affected by privatization. Another 2.1 
     million food stamp participants, which represents 10% of the 
     food stamps nationwide, will also be affected. Additionally, 
     nearly 17 thousand welfare jobs will be lost as well. All 
     this just to put another 3 billion dollars in the already fat 
     corporate pockets of the privatizing companies.
       With a kiss and a promise, Lockheed Martin wants us to 
     believe that they can administrate welfare systems better and 
     cheaper than public workers, and still make a profit. This 
     magic would impress even Houdini. I guess we are not to take 
     into account that just four years ago, Lockheed Martin 
     contracted with California to provide a child support 
     computer system for $99 million; but today the system is 
     still incomplete, and has cost in excess of $300 million 
     dollars. Or maybe Anderson Consulting thought that no one 
     heard of their child support tracking system in Texas which 
     is four years overdue and exceeds estimated costs by 600 
     percent.
       The fact is, privatizing welfare systems is wrong because 
     it will cost more, and the systems are likely to be less than 
     reliable. Aside from the cost and quality, welfare 
     privatization is morally wrong. It clearly represents a major 
     shift in focus from the needs of the poor to the needs of the 
     wealthy.
       We must continue to fight any attempts to deny minimum 
     wages to workfare participants. On the other hand, we need to 
     applaud all states that have shunned workfare programs and 
     decided to put their resources into helping real people, with 
     real needs, get into real jobs, paying real wages and 
     benefits.
       We must continue to mobilize, educate and motivate the 
     public around the truths of welfare.
       We must no longer allow public misconception to open the 
     door for predator politicians to prey upon the poor and weak.
       We can make a difference! We can turn back the devastating 
     impact of workfare if we stand up together and fight 
     together, and demand that public need come before corporate 
     greed.
       We can win!
                                  ____


          Josie Mooney, Service Employees International Union

       My name is Josie Mooney. I am Executive Director of SEIU 
     Local 790 in San Francisco. We represent 22,000 members who 
     work for public sector and nonprofit employers in Northern 
     California. Our members work as clerks, food service workers, 
     custodians, librarians, nurses, 911 dispatchers, 
     paraprofessionals, and in many other capacities. Eighty 
     percent of our members are women and people of color.
       Many of the workers we represent were on welfare at one 
     point or another in their lives. These workers are a living 
     testament to a reality we all should know and understand: The 
     best way to lift somebody out of poverty in this country is 
     to get them a union job. The wages, the health benefits, the 
     pensions, and the workplace rights and protections that 
     unions give to workers help to ensure a decent standard of 
     living for every working person, and help to ensure that each 
     worker will be treated with dignity and respect.
       As workfare workers come into our workplaces, we have 
     several important and interrelated obligations. The first is 
     to make sure--through our collective bargaining agreements 
     and through our laws--that the employer is not able to use 
     workfare workers to displace our members. We cannot end 
     poverty by putting others into poverty and by undercutting 
     standards we in the public sector have worked many decades to 
     win and retain.
       So in California we fought for and won strong language in 
     California's new welfare bill that is aimed at preventing 
     such displacement. At the same time, on the federal and state 
     levels, our members, along with the members of other SEIU 
     locals throughout California and the US, mobilized to fight 
     to make sure that workfare workers would be treated as 
     workers. We said, ``If you work, you are entitled to health 
     and safety protections; If you work, you are entitled to be 
     protected from discrimination; If you work, you are entitled 
     to the minimum wage.'' We won these battles, and in 
     California our new statute also gives workfare workers the 
     right to representation.
       Statutory language, of course, is not enough. In our 
     contract we have negotiated representation language, but we 
     will still need to push for full representation rights for 
     workfare workers.
       While these struggles are critical, they alone do not 
     fulfill the basic obligation we have as unions, as advocates, 
     as members the communities in which we live. For people to 
     get out of poverty permanently they need, as I said earlier, 
     a real job, a permanent full-time job with benefits, a union 
     job. So we need to fight for more: more training, more jobs--
     real jobs.
       And to get that good, job, that real job, new entrants to 
     the workforce need training. In San Francisco we have 
     negotiated a joint labor management committee to examine the 
     possibility of establishing training and apprenticeship 
     programs for workfare workers.
       But then where are the jobs? We may need a public job 
     creation initiative in San Francisco, one that would include 
     training along with the assurance of permanent full-time 
     employment. But we also need the resources to provide the 
     necessary support for workers to move into these jobs, such 
     as safe, affordable, quality child care.
       Public job creation takes money, however, and cities like 
     San Francisco do not necessarily have the money to make it 
     happen in a big enough way.
       Who does? Private enterprise. Corporations are making 
     record profits. Virtually all corporate leaders in California 
     supported the TANF bill signed last year. They will get 
     subsidies when they hire welfare recipients. So, therefore, 
     corporate America has an obligation to create jobs--real 
     jobs, permanent full-time jobs, with good wages and benefits, 
     with training and support.
       In San Francisco, we have the Committee on Jobs. I think 
     it's really the Committee on Corporate profits. In the last 
     four years, these companies have downsized by over 35,000 
     jobs, while their profits have soared. Last year alone, their 
     average profits increased over 30%. Their executive 
     compensation is off the charts. Some of their CEO's make in a 
     day or a week what our members earn in a year.
       These companies have pledged to fill 2000 jobs with welfare 
     recipients by the year 2000. Three problems: First, so far 
     only one company has hired anyone--40 welfare to work 
     participants into temporary jobs. The second problem is that 
     these 2000 jobs are not new jobs. And the final problem--the 
     major problem--is that there are at least another 10,000 
     welfare recipients who still need jobs. I think the private 
     sector has a long way to go to meet their obligation to the 
     community.
       As unions, we have the obligation to continue the battle 
     for everyone to have an opportunity to make a good, decent 
     living. We will do this by continuing our struggles to 
     maintain and raise standards for all workers. We will 
     develop, support, and fight for public and private job 
     creation initiatives. We will continue to work in community 
     coalitions to win living wage ordinances, as our locals have 
     in Los Angeles and around the country.
       And we will continue to organize the unorganized, because, 
     as I noted earlier, the most effective anti-poverty program 
     this country has ever had is the labor movement.
                                  ____


           David Roth, Executive Director of Cleveland Works

       Cleveland Works is an agency that was cited by both the 
     AFL-CIO Executive Board and the Clinton Administration as an 
     example of successful preparation of our welfare recipients, 
     allowing them to make successful transitions to real jobs. 
     Its success is based on an extensive set of training and 
     support

[[Page E735]]

     services provided to clients. These supports are threatened 
     by the new workfare rules which, among other things, would 
     disqualify people in serious training sessions from public 
     support. David Roth, the Executive Director of Cleveland 
     Works, could not attend today, but submitted testimony. I 
     will read excerpts from his lengthy statement.
       One of the main reasons new federal, state, and local 
     welfare legislation--welfare reform--is fundamentally flawed 
     is because there is no longer any priority, let alone 
     resources, for job training that can meet both employers' 
     workforce development needs and people's needs to be 
     gainfully employed. At the core of Cleveland Works' 
     philosophy and mission is the fundamental belief that full-
     time employment with health benefits is the only way for a 
     person and his/her family to achieve a decent standard of 
     living. A comprehensive and unique array of integrated family 
     programs and job related support services help participants 
     leap the many hurdles an barriers which stand in the way of 
     meaningful employment, good education, decent housing and 
     adequate health care. Cleveland Works is an attempt to 
     successfully remove a family's long-term welfare dependency 
     by providing heads of households on public assistance with 
     full-time jobs that provide employer-paid family health 
     benefits and an hourly wage that truly allows families to 
     achieve a good quality of life. Cleveland Works handles only 
     job openings that are full-time, offer employer-paid family 
     health benefits, and come with an average hourly wage high 
     enough to remove a family from the welfare rolls, and much 
     more importantly, from the vicious cycle of poverty. To us, 
     it is a mystery how any organization can effectively move 
     large numbers of welfare recipients into full-time work 
     without on-site family support programs, particularly legal 
     services and family development services. In the end, people 
     cannot permanently escape poverty without attorneys and 
     doctors, counselors and advocates, teachers and Cleveland 
     Works trainers working for them. Developing and maintaining 
     these essential services, is a small investment for the great 
     reward of thousands of families escaping poverty and becoming 
     hard working, productive, taxpaying citizens. While endorsing 
     Head Start programs, we ought to provide the resources to 
     enable child care and education to be year-round and last the 
     entire day, thereby being worker and family friendly. The 
     more we ignore the truth that low income people want to work 
     and only request equal opportunity to become excellent 
     employees, the more we will continue to perpetuate an 
     underclass whose stagnation and deprivation will adversely 
     affect us all. How can we deceive ourselves into thinking 
     people can somehow magically rise out of poverty when we know 
     they do not have the most potent weapon-skills and abilities 
     which enable them to apply their education and be paid for 
     their labor? How do we justify drastic reductions in job 
     training funding when we know for employers to successfully 
     compete they require a better skilled, educated employee? We 
     can continue fighting illiteracy, drugs, broken homes, 
     hunger, homelessness, domestic violence and mental illness, 
     but still never succeed until we face the stark reality that 
     employment is the core absolute to a family's ability to 
     successfully control and shape a better, brighter future. 
     Low-income people cannot be convinced or simply counseled 
     into becoming more responsible, secure, honest, trustworthy, 
     healthy citizens unless we effectively enable them to seize 
     meaningful opportunities to job training programs. There will 
     be no need to throw billions of dollars towards research and 
     academic surveys if agencies designed to address these 
     problems and provide essential services to the poor are 
     adequately funded and held accountable for their performance. 
     America is unique among advanced industrial nations in its 
     tolerance of unequal access to health care, education and 
     employment on which not the quality of life, but life itself, 
     depends. We are currently wrestling with how to best 
     accomplish welfare reform, yet the ingredients for successful 
     job training are non-existent because of the overwhelming 
     legislative and political emphasis and funding directed at 
     moving people off welfare, rather than effectively training 
     them to meet employers' needs so they can become, and remain, 
     tax paying, law abiding citizens. It is unconscionable that 
     while employers are in such great need of employees, and 
     people are in such great need of employment, there is no 
     coordinated or concentrated effort to solve these problems.
       One of the things that is disheartening to us in Cleveland 
     Jobs with Justice and the Cleveland area Workers' Rights 
     Board is that even as the Administration holds Cleveland 
     Works up as an example, it promulgates laws and regulations 
     that under cut the agency's programs.

     

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