Most of the marchers came from New York City, where able-bodied adults without young children now must work part-time–mainly cleaning up city parks–to collect a benefit check. These folks think ““workfare’’ stinks. ““We have to share the crummy boots and gloves. We don’t even get our own,’’ yelled one woman. An older woman hollered that ““workfare is trying to make us into slaves again.’’ This is the newest front in the war over welfare: new federal law mandates that 25 percent of all adult welfare recipients work for their benefits by next year (50 percent have to be on the job by 2002). Workfare supporters consider the programs a temporary training ground to prepare people for private-sector jobs. But Kest and Co. have their own ideas. They are trying to unionize–with the eventual goal of securing permanent government jobs for their followers.
It may seem farfetched for the jobless to be forming a labor union, but Kest and ACORN are optimistic. On their side is the fact that most workfare will be handled by local governments, which are vulnerable to pressure tactics. (The private sector will probably employ only a small percentage of participants through subsidized jobs.) Meanwhile, the aspiring organizers have won some powerful allies, most notably the AFL-CIO. The union makes no secret of having its own selfish reason for joining the fight: it’s worried that a flood of cheap labor will undermine the job security of already unionized municipal employees.
For the unions, the task at hand is tricky. Under labor law, welfare recipients can organize but can’t strike. Still, Kest and his allies are making inroads. In New York, which has 35,000 people on workfare, ACORN has persuaded 6,500 of them to sign union authorization cards since December 1996. About half of those pay $5-a-month dues. In Los Angeles, after 60 workfare recipients doing janitorial work at County-USC Hospital protested their working conditions, they won new uniforms and an employee discount at the hospital cafeteria.
The scope of the debate will only widen. Welfare administrators say they don’t mind addressing legitimate grievances but worry that the unionization efforts are giving the recipients the wrong idea about their future. Margaret Quinn, the program deputy for Los Angeles’s General Relief Program, says that most workfare jobs are menial and are meant to teach elementary habits like timeliness–not provide long-term employment. Richard Schwartz, the architect of New York’s welfare reform, is more frank: ““These are not real jobs, and it is a mistake for anyone on welfare to think they ever will be.''
