The New Discipline of Welfare and Work
Young, Iris
FOUR YEARS after passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, many government and media reports have declared welfare reform a success. They measure...
...Even though many jobs don't pay enough to meet one's needs, are only part time, are very insecure, and make a person highly dependent on employers and co-workers, these facts are obscured by the language of self-sufficiency, which retains the sense of being able to fend for oneself and one's loved ones...
...The norm of self-sufficiency harkens back to a rustic image of independent property holders who live well by working hard on their property, socializing or exchanging with others only from a desire for pleasure or edification...
...Most states have in fact designed their welfare policies to make serious skill development extremely difficult...
...Students who aim to enhance their skills and capacities are also, usually, engaged in productive activity...
...Most people's livelihood depends on the goodwill of an organization that employs them or their family members...
...Formal after-school programs for school-age children are almost nonexistent...
...An important feature of what Marcuse called "one dimensional society" is that prevailing discourses referring to everyday life, politics, power, and the social relations of production and consumption are so framed that they provoke uncritical assent and acceptance by closing off the possibility of mediated reflection...
...Equating a right to autonomy and respect with self-sufficiency puts impossibly demanding conditions on the earning of respect...
...What many recipients understandably want is the opportunity to acquire a technical skill or obtain a college degree, but most states do not count time in post–high school classes as a legitimate work activity...
...Recipients and potential recipients often sit across the desk from caseworkers who are poorly trained and overworked...
...We should challenge the notion that the only "real" work is a paid job and that all workers must meet the same standards of time and stress...
...Reimbursement checks take months to arrive, during which time mothers either forgo food to pay for child care or can't pay the caretakers, who eventually leave...
...Reports from some public assistance programs suggest that cities and counties are sometimes requiring recipients to do dirty and difficult work without supplying adequate protective clothing or equipment...
...This equation is hardly restricted to welfare policy, it pervades the contemporary economy...
...Notice the absurdity in this definition...
...I borrow this phrase, "close the universe of discourse," from Herbert Marcuse's One Di26 n DISSENT / Summer 2000 mensional Man...
...Some people are lucky enough to have families, churches, or unions with commitments to mutual aid and resources enough to provide this support...
...It is fine for adults to seek higher education or technical training, but only if they are lucky enough to be able to afford it...
...Certain forms of dependence and interdependence, that is, should be understood as normal conditions for being autonomous...
...Work becomes defined as whatever an authority says it is...
...All these are important issues, but in this essay I want to focus on another aspect of the rhetoric and practice of welfare in the United States today...
...It is undoubtedly less a political program than an ideal, a limited concept according to which we can criticize existing social arrangements and personal situations and take action to improve them...
...Many workers are either monitors of machines or monitored by machines...
...More often than not, these jobs require few skills and offer little prospect of development...
...But self-sufficiency is an impossible ideal, and it is wrong to tie it to aspirations for autonomy...
...The definition makes it sound as if they just work for themselves...
...A faith in technology led many in the midtwentieth century to predict that automation would release workers from danger and drudgery, reduce the amount of work we all did, and transform the remaining work into pleasant, challenging, and useful activity...
...I am trying to formulate a more minimalist ideal, one that most people can imagine aspiring to, whatever their current education or skills...
...It is not hard to show that having a job and making a social contribution may or may not coincide...
...In this context, a "good" job has come to mean one with decent pay and benefits, acceptable working conditions, and opportunities for socializing...
...They argue that demands and aspirations for self-sufficiency are a hoax unless former state dependents can find good jobs—jobs (as I've already described them) that pay a wage sufficient to support a family in a decent life, that are secure over time, have good health and retirement benefits, and decent working conditions...
...The system's rhetoric mystifies the idea of self-sufficiency and wrongly reduces the value of making a social contribution to having a "job...
...CRITICS OF contemporary welfare policy question the equation of self-sufficiency with having a job, any job...
...It means only having a job, and therefore according to the terms of the welfare state, no longer drawing on public funds...
...States are permitted to design a welfare system that enables recipients to get real training and advanced education, but most don't do it...
...This is the ideal: that the work people do ought to be clearly connected to social uses and recognized by others for its contribution to the well-being of men and women and their environment...
...A welfare system that puts "work first" obscures for all workers the utopian vision of being occupied with useful and challenging activity that gives one pride and recognition...
...Many people are not so lucky, however—and many of them are not "poor" by government definition...
...Some eligible people may be discouraged from applying for benefits because they believe them no longer available or because they are treated dismissively by social workers...
...others do not have the right to determine what is good for her...
...Even the most progressive critics, however, have not raised questions about what effect "work first" policies have on the quality of the content of work: whether the work itself is useful, engages the interest of the worker, develops his or her skills, and takes place in a context of respectful social relations...
...My point is only that poor mothers and single mothers ought to have as much freedom as anyone else to manage the combination...
...But it is a mistake to tie these important goals to a rhetoric of self-sufficiency...
...Welfare as we once knew it grudgingly recognized that responsible care of homes and children is work...
...Nearly everyone seems to agree that recipients of public assistance should "work," that having a job is the only meaning of "work," and that the goal of welfare programs is to make people "self-sufficient...
...In a democratic society of equal citizens everyone ought to be autonomous in the sense of being able to determine one's own projects and goals, without having to answer for those goals to others, and without having to obey the orders of others about how one will live...
...Do speculators who invest in high rise office buildings that remain half empty improve society...
...They are allowed to encourage recipients to obtain post—high school associate, four-year college, or technical degrees...
...Advocates of welfare justice should re-open the question of the purposes of work and its meaning, and in this way resist the narrowing of the terms of full citizenship to the acceptance of whatever tasks a powerful person assigns...
...In this rugged individualist imagination, a person, a family, a community is self-sufficient if it can meet its own needs with minimal adjustment to the desires or actions of others...
...A dream of self-sufficiency is seductive...
...WHEN PUBLIC officials promote such "work first" policies, when community leaders applaud them and recipients are forced to accept them, the consequence is an increase in disciplinary exploitation for many...
...When welfare rhetoric invokes self-sufficiency today, however, it doesn't mean being literally independent from engagement with others to meet one's needs...
...Self-sufficiency is a cruel joke if these jobs are not secure or if they don't provide decent working conditions and health and retirement benefits...
...Child care subsidies are good only for children under the age of thirteen...
...The insistence that welfare recipients get jobs has raised important new questions about the availability of jobs and what level of pay and benefits is necessary to lift families out of poverty...
...While they must be more educated than their grandparents, their work is often routine and tedious...
...I suggest that it is a masculinist ideal of fending for oneself without needing to rely on the care and support of others...
...Many recipients are neither treated with respect nor properly informed of their options...
...Many jobs are arguably wasteful, even harmful in their effects...
...Even when care is heavily subsidized, poor mothers must still pay as much as $50 per week from their own pockets...
...DISSENT / Summer 2000 n 27 WORK AND WELFARE If we care about helping people live autonomous and productive lives, we ought to recognize the need for aid and support as the norm, and the ability to fend for oneself as the exception...
...We should refuse to agree that self-sufficiency excludes reliance on communal assistance, and we should reject an ideology that grants autonomy only to those deemed self-sufficient...
...One of the effects of the new welfare system is to close off argument about the meaning of autonomy and work...
...Many of those not eligible or no longer eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) are never told that they may still be eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, child health benefits, housing subsidies, child care, or transportation assistance...
...Welfare policy thus should be tied more broadly to employment and human capital investment— so as to raise wages, open opportunities for the acquisition of qualifications, and expand the supply of good jobs...
...Mothers of older children with disabilities are sometimes forced DISSENT / Summer 2000 • 25 WORK AND WELFARE to work even though they receive no help with care of their children...
...In some states, a TANF recipient can attend school or a training program for no more than twelve months...
...Welfare rhetoric and the ideological views it presupposes cut off discussion about whether work should be meaningful...
...During all this time recipients are not "working," in the sense of having a job...
...It moves the dream of meaningful work out of this world...
...We've come a long way from making people break rocks for their supper...
...They are rather expensive to establish and implement, however, much more expensive for each individual than the old welfare system was...
...Even so, the dangers to children and worries for parents caused by the welfare system are frightening...
...Many recipients, nonprofit service providers, and policy analysts, however, are less sanguine...
...Even progressive critics, even the recipients of public assistance themselves, appear to accept the radically altered terms of the new welfare system, designed by antigovernment conservatives...
...Most people want to do meaningful and publicly recognized work, they want to meet their responsibilities to their family, and they want the freedom to decide how best to achieve both these goals...
...The state says that because you receive aid, its agents can set specific conditions on how you will live, sometimes on where you will live...
...IRIS YOUNG lives in Chicago, where she teaches in the political science department at the University of Chicago...
...Here is how one advocacy group, the Women's Association for Women's Alternatives, which has advocated such a progressive standard, defines self-sufficiency: "The Self-Sufficiency Standard measures how much income is needed, for a family of a given composition in a given place, to adequately meet its basic needs— without public or private assistance" ("The SelfSufficiency Standard for Pennsylvania," May 1999, p. 1...
...My own feeling is that a judicious combination of flexible job hours, quality time when parents can care for and educate their children, and out-of-home child care is best for both children and parents...
...Yet more than ever before, it seems to me, dominant ideology and practices tell them that their yearnings are utopian...
...At the turn of the millennium, few express such hopes, for automation has been here for some time now without realizing these workplace dreams...
...Self-sufficiency in this sense has always been a dream...
...In the days of the yeoman farmer or the independent artisan or manufacturer, however, it was not laughable to aspire to a condition approximating self-sufficiency...
...Today welfare recipients for the most part cannot decide for themselves...
...Ideals of Meaningful Work Plenty of people who never applied for public assistance, of course, have no choice but to work at a job they find beneath their dignity, meaningless, poorly paid, with lousy working conditions...
...WORK AND WELFARE What does being "self-sufficient" mean...
...Whatever small zone of autonomy recipients had under the old welfare system is narrowed to nearly zero in this system...
...An autonomous person is not dependent on another to set the direction of her life...
...Paramount among these is caring for children and other family members, doing housework for them and oneself...
...Almost all of us have our capacities enhanced if we get help in learning new skills and in negotiating the complexities of this society's financial and bureaucratic relations...
...In today's very different economy, perhaps some people can be self-sufficient in this sense, but they are very few...
...There are many other activities that importantly contribute to society that are often not paid or poorly paid: community organizing, care of the environment, the production and dissemination of art works and performances...
...It ought to contribute in determinate ways to the development of a person's capacities, either directly in the skills the work requires one to learn or indirectly in its requirements for cooperative interaction with others...
...These values are rightly implied by ideals of citizenship and dignity...
...It is valuable for parents to take care of their children at home, but only if they have a partner able to support the unpaid caregiver...
...And finally, we should be prepared to face the derision of our fellow citizens by dreaming about and arguing about meaningful work...
...Some Americans are forced to work sixty hours a week while others beg for twenty, and for most job security has decreased over the last two decades...
...Such an ideology widens the class privilege gap in many ways, not only for today's adults, but even more for tomorrow's...
...Teenagers in Pennsylvania apparently are expected to stay at home unsupervised for many hours of the day or night, during the years when they are most likely to slack on school work or get into trouble with the law...
...The dream of meaningful work is at least as old as socialism, perhaps as old as humanity...
...Much professional work has become more high pressured and time consuming, at the same time that internal evaluations and reorganization efforts frequently seem pointless to its cubicle dwellers...
...Meanwhile, the number of people seeking help from soup kitchens and food pantries has risen steadily—even now, after the supposed miracle decade of American economic prosperity...
...Whatever is presented as a job opportunity, whatever the nature of the job, the social relations, pay, or working conditions, welfare recipients must accept...
...they must accept the only private or public job offered or lose benefits, often risking the well-being of their children in the process...
...The viability of those employers themselves depends on often distant economic processes...
...States require recipients to work at least twenty hours a week after two years of benefits, either at jobs they find themselves or that the welfare offices find for them...
...The child care benefits available to mothers of younger children often do not match their needs...
...Making jobs a necessary condition for public assistance, however, further closes the universe of discourse about work...
...I recently attended a hearing to evaluate the TANF program in Pennsylvania, at which I heard a stream of stories about the inability of mothers on public assistance to ensure that their children are well taken care of...
...if taken literally it would imply that those who meet their needs without relying on public or private assistance do not depend on others to ensure their subsistence...
...I don't mean to suggest that it is best for children to be cared for at home or that mothers should not have opportunities to work outside their homes...
...Every state now has a more complex system of benefits and services, with changing and confusing rules...
...Almost no one can be literally self-sufficient in this highly interdependent world of institutional supports and global markets...
...Like the state of Pennsylvania, they have chosen to mandate "work first" TANF programs...
...I think that even today most people yearn for meaningfulness in this sense...
...They measure success by reduction in the number of those receiving welfare checks and to some extent by the numbers known to have left the rolls because they have gotten a job...
...At the same time, many unpaid or poorly paid activities contribute centrally to the social good...
...Most states require recipients of TANF to work, to attend job training or job readiness programs, or to engage in other "work activities...
...Reduction of Work to Having a Job The other ideological slide in contemporary welfare rhetoric equates work with a job...
...As recently as 1973 a report issued by the Nixon administration's Department of Health, Education and Welfare justified broader support for AFDC mothers on grounds that they ought to have the option to work at home taking care of their children instead of working outside the home...
...Before, a poor single mother's options were limited, but the existence of a "safety net" gave her a little freedom to decide what to do...
...Although these programs increase the skills of some recipients, for many they are a waste of time because the people served already know what the programs claim to teach or because the teaching isn't thorough enough...
...IN DEFINING meaningful work, I have tried to avoid taking either art or science or running a factory as paradigms...
...Some such programs have indeed been instituted...
...30 n DISSENT / Summer 2000...
...Sometimes people rightly think their work is valuable, but they are the privileged few, especially if they are not forced to work under highly stressed and poorly paid conditions...
...When critics of welfare policy talk about good jobs, they refer to important issues like pay and working conditions...
...And effective education and training take years...
...As a result of all this, many children spend long hours home alone or their mothers fail to fulfill their work requirements, for which they are often punished...
...when they got older she could combine care with her own schooling...
...Does spending day after day at an automatic dialing machine, occasionally persuading a consumer to switch long distance companies, expand the general welfare...
...This ideology commands assent partly because it relies on appeals to two real values: personal autonomy and social contribution...
...No one has a right to expect material support for doing either of these things...
...Meaningful work may be hard work, and it does not need to involve sophisticated knowledge, techniques, or organizational skills...
...Most programs provide services only for daytime hours, forcing mothers to leave children unattended when the only jobs available require evening or night hours...
...The popularity of the comic strip Dilbert among both white- and blue-collar workers may indicate that many people share its cynical attitude: the work I do and the organization in which I do it are for the most part irrational and pointless...
...This is what I mean by work...
...There are many hazards and indignities for people in the welfare system...
...But of course they don't...
...The better conceptual link is between autonomy, on the one hand, and dependence and support, on the other...
...I think that these simple propositions, on which there is wide consensus, express a damaging ideology that serves to close the universe of discourse about the respect people deserve, the meaning of work, and the aspiration for autonomy...
...Most recipients are expected to spend their time searching for low-paid, unskilled work...
...A job, on the other hand, is a task assigned by a powerful person for which he or she is willing to pay...
...the word "good" does not refer to the content of the work itself...
...others may be terminated from programs without prospects of jobs...
...This conflation marginalizes socially valuable but unpaid activities, particularly domestic work and child rearing...
...Our social world is too complex, and contains too many physical, economic, and emotional hazards to expect that most people can pursue productive lives most of the time without a wide net of social supports...
...If the goal of welfare policy is to make poor families self-sufficient, then their wage earners need to have jobs that pay a living wage, which some estimate at almost twice the minimum wage for a family of three...
...Under the new system, states have the power to set up education and training programs that develop the capacities and skills of recipients in specialized fields where there appear to be future job opportunities...
...Wouldn't it be nice to be left alone, and not to have to anticipate the actions of others, not to depend on a web of social connection in going about one's ordinary business, and not to be answerable to others for the way one's actions affect them...
...State programs are well on their way toward moving people from welfare to work, it seems, and thereby to "self-sufficiency...
...The possibility of saying no to an unacceptable job declines...
...Aid for Dependent Children and Aid to Families with Dependent Children 28 n DISSENT / Summer 2000 (AFDC) were programs based on the premise that children of poor parents deserve as much as others to live with and be cared for by their parents, and that public support may be necessary to make this possible...
...Does helping to produce a different tasting toothpaste contribute usefully to the social good...
...We should challenge the assumption that the only way to make a social contribution is through labor market participation, and we should insist that other contributions be seriously valued...
...She could take care of her children at home for a while...
...States may have reduced their welfare rolls significantly, but poor tracking means they often know little about whether those no longer receiving benefits are better or worse off than before...
...A condition of the realization of autonomy for most people, at some time in their lives, is that they receive resources and/or personal assistance from others...
...But it ought to engage a person's interest, intellect, and commitment DISSENT / Summer 2000 n 29 WORK AND WELFARE in at least some of its aspects, and the worker ought to be able to take pride in the work when it is well done...
...they depend on the needs and desires of their employers for their subsistence...
...In the United States today welfare deprives people of autonomy in significant ways...
...There is an ideological slide here from autonomy to self-sufficiency...
...The welfare ideology that reduces work to having a job has a further consequence of making unpaid care of children or advanced training class privileges in a much more obvious way than before...
...and there is no tangible connection between the worker and the organizational outcome of the work...
...Some may have jobs for a while, and then lose them for one reason or another...
...It becomes even more difficult than before to question the quality of jobs...
...The Ideology of Self-Sufficiency My claim is that the welfare rhetoric of work and self-sufficiency is ideological, establishing a framework of thought that achieves wide consent but systematically distorts people's understanding of their social conditions and reinforces unjust relations of economic and social power...
...In fact, welfare recipients unable to find employment in the private sector increasingly work for the counties that administer their welfare, pickWORK AND WELFARE ing up garbage and litter, cleaning office buildings, doing clerical work, and so on...
...Welfare rhetoric tells poor people that they will not be treated with equal respect, as autonomous agents, until they are self-sufficient...
...The dominant philosophy of public assistance says that the surest road to "self-sufficiency" is for mothers to go to a job right away, whatever their skill level, and whatever kind of job is available...
...It is entirely appropriate to expect people to devote thoughtful energy and skill to furthering their own well-being and that of others, that is, to make a contribution to society...
...The old welfare system also grudgingly allowed poor mothers to enroll in college or technical training programs, and receive benefits, sometimes for years, while increasing their qualifications...
...They can work with employers and unions to develop apprenticeship programs...
...The harshness of welfare reform did bring the need for child care to the attention of legislators, and funding for child care for low-income people has increased at both federal and state levels...
Vol. 47 • July 2000 • No. 3
