[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 56 (Thursday, May 7, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E804-E806]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




PART 2: JOBS WITH JUSTICE: FIRST NATIONAL WORKERS' RIGHTS BOARD HEARING

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 7, 1998

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, 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 remarks for the Congressional 
Record.
  Part 2 of this statement includes: Joselito Laudencia of Californians 
for Justice; Christopher Lamb of the Center on Social Welfare Policy 
and Law; Sabrina Gillon of the Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee; 
and Paul Booth of the American Federation of State, County and 
Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

                        Californians for Justice

              (By Joselito Laudencia, Executive Director)

       Good morning. My name is Joselito Laudencia and I am the 
     Executive Director of Californians for Justice. Californians 
     for Justice is a grassroots multiracial organization working 
     to build political power among communities of color, and poor 
     and young people of all colors in California. Earlier this 
     year, we launched a campaign for Economic Justice. With 
     welfare reform devastating our constituencies, we decided to 
     launch a multi-year campaign for public jobs. Specifically, 
     with the state government pushing hundreds of thousands of 
     welfare recipients into the workforce, we feel that the state 
     government has a responsibility to ensure that jobs are 
     available, that these jobs are good paying jobs with 
     benefits, and that these jobs actually address the needs of 
     California's communities.
       Let me provide some context. The signing into law of 
     welfare reform on a federal level sent a simple message that 
     everyone on welfare needs to get a job. The new law says that 
     everyone on welfare must be at work within 24 months for a 
     minimum of 20 hours a week. Currently, there are over 900,000 
     welfare recipients in California, with at least 300,000 
     facing this two-year time limit within two years. And 
     families have only 5 years in a lifetime to receive welfare--
     even if there are no jobs.
       This destruction of the welfare system comes at a time when 
     jobs have been leaving over the last 25 years. Corporations 
     have been downsizing, automating, shifting to part-time 
     workers and moving overseas.
       If any job growth is happening, it occurs in two fields. 
     One area includes highly skilled jobs. As Times Magazine in 
     January 1997 highlighted, the hottest fields in terms of new 
     jobs include teachers, nurses, executives, lawyers, financial 
     managers, computer engineers, and accountants, jobs which 
     require extensive levels of education and training.
       The other arena includes the fast growing occupations and 
     industries that frequently offer part-time or temporary work 
     and often lack basic benefits, especially in the retail trade 
     and the service sector.
       We also have to realize that the U.S. and the California 
     economy have never provided enough jobs. Although the 
     unemployment rate has been at its lowest in 23 years, over 1 
     million people in California are ``officially'' unemployed. 
     On top of that, California will witness over 100,000 college 
     graduates and over 270,000 public high school graduates. This 
     also doesn't take into account the over

[[Page E805]]

     1 million underemployed, who include involuntary part-time 
     workers and persons not working due to lack of child care, 
     transportation and other factors. Plus, this doesn't include 
     discouraged workers who've stopped working and workers who 
     work full time at low-wages that aren't enough to survive.
       With millions looking for work and welfare recipients 
     entering the workforce, California projects a job growth of 
     only 270,000 each year.
       If we look at traditional efforts to create jobs, we find 
     that they don't work. Providing tax subsidies to corporations 
     to create jobs hasn't worked. Job training programs usually 
     result in individuals completing programs with no jobs at the 
     end process.
       With this context, Californians for Justice is waging a 
     public jobs campaign in California and is urging that Jobs 
     with Justice take on a public job creation campaign as a 
     necessary strategy to provide a viable and alternative 
     solution to welfare reform.
       We must reassert the role of government to ensure the 
     health and well-being of every person, especially those most 
     in need.
       To conclude, I'd like to outline the political principles 
     that guide our efforts to job creation: (1) Jobs must be at 
     living wage salaries and with benefits, including health care 
     and child care; (2) Jobs must be new jobs and not replace or 
     displace pre-existing workers or positions; (3) These jobs 
     must be union jobs; (4) Priority for jobs must be given to 
     communities of color, women and poor communities that have 
     been devastated by unemployment; (5) Public jobs must be in 
     projects that will truly benefit communities. Projects must 
     reflect a politics of redistribution of wealth to low-income 
     communities and communities of color and not predominantly a 
     funding of private industry with public funds in a way that 
     maintains a structure of wealth moving upward for profit 
     maximization; (6) A Jobs program must address the entire need 
     for jobs towards eradicating unemployment; (7) Since this 
     system cannot guarantee jobs for all and because there are 
     people unable to work, there must be a safety net and aright 
     to entitlement benefits, including childcare, medical care, 
     transportation and living wage cash grants.
       No one organization or group can make this happen. We all 
     need to work together to expose the truth that the jobs are 
     not out there and push for a pro-active solution that 
     addresses the needs of all our communities.
                                  ____


                Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law

                         (By Christopher Lamb)


                            I. Introduction

       My name is Christopher Lamb. I am a senior attorney at The 
     Welfare Law Center in New York City. We are a national not-
     for-profit law office dedicated to working with and on behalf 
     of welfare recipients and organizations of welfare recipients 
     in securing and protecting recipients' legal rights to fair 
     and decent treatment both as welfare recipients and, where 
     applicable, as workers in welfare work programs. We are 
     currently counsel in several class action lawsuits involving 
     abuses in New York City's workfare program. We are also 
     coordinating a national effort to support workfare organizing 
     called the Workfare Research and Advocacy Project.


                        II. Workfare background

       Workfare is work performed as a condition of receiving a 
     welfare grant. It is not a job. While it may be possible to 
     gain recognition of workfare participants' status as workers 
     to secure them coverage under the multitude of employment 
     laws that most of us take for granted, doing so in most cases 
     will require political and legal battles.
       Workfare is not new. Various types of work relief have 
     existed for as long as there has been public assistance and 
     workfare existed as part of the federal AFDC program for its 
     last thirty years. Workfare therefore has a track record and 
     that record shows that it is not an effective path off of 
     welfare or to higher income or to a job.
       Despite the dismal history of workfare as a strategy for 
     moving people off of welfare and into jobs, last year's 
     federal welfare reform bill places substantial pressure to 
     expand existing workfare programs and to create new ones. 
     Over a quarter of the states currently have workfare programs 
     and it is likely that more states will add programs as the 
     pressures increase under the federal law to have welfare 
     recipients in what the bill calls ``work activities''. New 
     York City has the largest workfare program in the nation with 
     close to 40,000 participants.


                         III. Workfare problems

       As cities and states expand their workfare programs, 
     workfare participants are facing many problems that are 
     common to other low-wage workers as well as some that are 
     unique to their situations as workfare workers. In many 
     instances, these problems are surfacing first and most 
     prominently in New York City's program because of its size 
     and because it has been operating at a very substantial size 
     for longer than most other programs. There is, however, no 
     reason to believe that any of these issues will appear only 
     in New York.
       Health and Safety. Workfare workers who were performing 
     hot, dirty work cleaning streets in New York City had to sue 
     this summer to gain access to bathrooms and drinking 
     water, protective clothing, and right to know training 
     about work place hazards. Although the workers won a court 
     order, lack of appropriate protective gear and failure to 
     provide right to know training remain commonplace at 
     worksites throughout the City.
       New York City is not alone in failing to maintain 
     appropriate health and safety standards for its workfare 
     workers. In Los Angeles, for example, workfare workers at 
     city hospitals who are required to mop floors soiled with 
     blood and other medical waste are not provided with boots or 
     other protective clothing.
       Workers' Compensation. In Ohio, the Ohio Supreme Court 
     recently struck down a state law which limited to $33/week 
     the death benefit paid to the widow of a workfare worker 
     killed by a work-related illness. Similar laws are still in 
     effect in other states. For example, New York law guarantees 
     workers' compensation to workfare workers, ``but not 
     necessarily at the same benefit level'' provided to other 
     workers.
       Minimum and Prevailing Wage. New York City ignored a state 
     law which required it to compensate workfare workers at 
     prevailing wage and then when a court ordered it to comply 
     with the law the City successfully sought to have the statute 
     repealed. Elsewhere, serious minimum wage violations are 
     occurring. In several states, workfare workers are being 
     required to work 35 to 40 hours per week although they 
     receive cash assistance and food stamps that are equal to 
     closer to 20 hours per week at the minimum wage.
       Denial of Access to Ed. and Training. In New York City, the 
     growth of the workfare programs has had a devastating impact 
     on welfare recipients' access to education and training. At 
     the City University of New York, the number of welfare 
     recipients enrolled dropped from 27,000 to 22,000 in one year 
     and is still dropping. Small pre-college and vocational 
     educational programs have seen even more devastating drops in 
     enrollment.


                      IV. Impact on other workers

       Large scale workfare programs inevitably result in the 
     displacement of other workers and the loss of jobs paying 
     decent wages. Simultaneously with increasing its workfare 
     program to about 40,000 participants, New York City reduced 
     its payroll by over 20,000 workers. Displacement has also 
     been documented elsewhere. In Baltimore, for example, the 
     school board has replaced custodial workers who were paid a 
     living wage under a local living wage ordinance with workfare 
     workers.
       The use of workfare workers also depresses the wages of 
     other workers. In New York, for example, it has been 
     estimated that 30,000 workfare workers working 26 hours per 
     week would result in the depression of wages in the bottom 
     third of the workforce by 9% or in the displacement of 20,000 
     other workers, or some combination of these two effects.


                             V. Conclusion

       The vast majority of welfare recipients with whom I speak 
     in my work want to work. They want to earn a wage with which 
     they can meet their families' basic needs and they want to be 
     treated fairly and decently in the workplace. In other words, 
     they want jobs, not workfare. It is incumbent upon all of us 
     to fight with them toward that goal.
                                  ____


                      How AFDC/W-2 Has Affected Me

                          (By Sabrina Gillon)

       Hello, my name is Sabrina Gillon and this is my statement 
     of how AFDC/W-2 has affected my life and forced me to leave 
     out of college at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
       I first entered college in the Fall of 1995. I originally 
     entered into college at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 
     and half way through the semester I was told that in order to 
     receive any daycare for my son I would have to leave UWM and 
     go to a two year college. At the end of the Fall semester, I 
     left UWM, reluctantly, and went to Milwaukee Area Technical 
     College. Once there, I enrolled in the Administrative 
     Assistant Program which was a very far stretch away from the 
     Wildlife Conservationist program that I was in at UWM.
       The entire time I was in classes at MATC, I was constantly 
     being sent letters saying that I was being sanctioned for no 
     reason at all because I was attending all of my classes on a 
     daily basis and working in the computer lab when I wasn't in 
     class. All together I was down at the MATC campus a total of 
     7 to 8 hours a day. At one point in time, I was being sent 
     sanction letters every other week for about 2 to 3 months. It 
     was a very maddening and frustrating time for me. I would 
     have to miss class in order to go down to the welfare office 
     and get the matter straightened out. My worker, Alexia 
     Daniels, was usually not able to be reached and I would have 
     to request to see her supervisor just to get the situation 
     cleared up.
       As spring semester of 1997 came I was continually reminded 
     that my time to be in school was coming to a close and that I 
     should begin looking for a job. When I asked my worker, Jane 
     Jilk, at the Milwaukee Job Center Network (North) about 
     possible ways in which I could stay in school, all she could 
     say was for me to take some evening classes and she 
     emphasized that daycare would not be provided. Any my 
     question to her was ``how am I going to be able to take night 
     classes when I have no one to watch my 3 year old son while I 
     am in class?'' She could not even give me a reasonable 
     answer. This is part of the area of W-2 and/or AFDC that 
     confuses me though. How is it that some participants on AFDC 
     are able to continue their college schooling and also 
     continue to receive

[[Page E806]]

     daycare for their child(ren), while others are told that they 
     are on their own, or ``Gee, that's just to bad.'' For this 
     system to supposedly be designed to help people, I truly do 
     not see where it shows any caring or compassion for the 
     individuals who are on it, especially those who are trying to 
     achieve a goal greater than one of simply working for minimum 
     wage. Is it so wrong to want for a better life in which we, 
     AFDC recipients, can make reasonable wages so that we can 
     sustain and take care of our families?
       In closing, I would just like to say that W-2, as it is 
     now, is just not going to work. Many people are going to be 
     destitute and lost. The United States is one of the richest 
     countries in the world, yet one of the poorest when it comes 
     to caring about its own people. I can only hope that the 
     Government and Thompson soon see that W-2 is not as wonderful 
     and spectacular as they presume it to be. Thank you very much 
     for your thoughtfulness, time, and consideration in listening 
     to what I had to say. It is greatly appreciated.
                                  ____


      Testimony October 25, 1997 to National Workers Rights Board

   (By Paul Booth, Assistant to the President and Director of Field 
                               Services)

       If there was a time when the labor movement held itself 
     apart from the trials and tribulations of people on relief, 
     that day is gone.
       The AFL-CIO proclaimed our commitment to organizing 
     workfare workers at the February Council meeting, proclaimed 
     the solidarity of the unionized 13 million American workers 
     with the million recipients who are being placed into the 
     workplace. The connections we are creating--in Baltimore, 
     between AFSCME council 67 and local 44, and BUILD, the 
     community organization, and Solidarity Sponsoring Committee, 
     and the welfare recipients who are joining this coalition as 
     members in good standing; in New York, between AFSCME 
     District Council 37, and ACORN, and JWJ, which has now 
     unmistakably demonstrated the demand for representation--
     these connections exemplify the AFL-CIO's policy, and they 
     defeat the insidious intent of the Gingrich crowd, namely to 
     pit union workers against workfare workers in a Hobbesian 
     conflict that could only destroy our hard-won conditions of 
     work, to the detriment of all.
       AFSCME, the Service Employees, and the Communications 
     Workers, took the initiative, as soon as the new law was 
     enacted, to try to redefine the issue. That it be seen not 
     just as the change from welfare dependency, to work; it is 
     about the conditions of that work.
       We ask you to make the finding that these questions are 
     within your purview, as matters of Workers Rights . . . that 
     recipients, once placed on the job, are workers, entitled to 
     these rights: To a living wage job; to membership in the 
     union at their workplace; to organize in a union where one is 
     not in place; and to equal treatment under the labor laws.