JOBS AND JUSTICE
Primack, Phil
Jobs and Justice Organizing a constituency that has largely been ignored Phil Primack About 400 teen-agers marched on Boston's City Hall last year to protest restrictions on a Federally funded...
...The Carter Administration's economic advisers have made it clear that inflation, rather than unemployment, is their top economic priority...
...In its first months of organizing last summer, Jobs and Justice claims to have involved more than 6,000 people in direct action, producing some 10,000 jobs worth more than $9 million in wages and benefits...
...By organizing as many local CETA chapters as possible, Jobs and Justice hopes to achieve enough collective clout to influence public sector employment policy...
...Fair Welfare is one such group...
...This notion of constituency organizing isn't new...
...With further economic dislocations likely in the near future, the problem of joblessness is bound to increase...
...With the attention of the media aroused, the city arranged a meeting with business leaders and concerned citizens...
...These stirrings, still small when compared to the magnitude of the problem, reflect the efforts of a new movement that calls itself "Jobs and Justice," a national umbrella organization for campaigns now under way in eight major cities...
...Phil Primack is a free-lance writer in Boston...
...Organized labor obviously has a major stake in this area, and Jobs and Justice hopes to establish ties with major unions, though its priority now is to build its own organizing models...
...It also means that the Full Employment Coalitions formed in support of the Humphrey-Hawkins "Full Employment" Act, passed last year in watered-down form, will now move to support more direct kinds of organizing around jobs issues, says New England Jobs and Justice organizer Mark Splain...
...It was the basis of George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization and, in fact, the kind of coalition Wiley had in mind when he formed the Poverty Rights Law Center in 1966...
...IBM agreed to discuss training and local hiring...
...When a city official told them to look instead to the private sector for employment, they took him at his word: About 250 of them went marching through Boston's financial district, knocking on corporate doors...
...The Association of CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) Employes is another...
...We're confident that as we move along, key union leaders will become increasingly supportive of our issues and organizing efforts," Splain says...
...Jobs and Justice has attracted organizing veterans from the National Welfare Rights Organization, many of whom have more recently been working with such issue-oriented, low-to-moderate-income organizations as Massachusetts Fair Share and ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which is active in several states...
...Without further ado, a new $2 million youth jobs program, with $750,000 to be spent that summer, was announced...
...These funds have rarely been used to meet long-term social needs, such as the construction of adequate public housing or mass transit...
...It wants "to make existing manpower programs such as CETA produce more jobs and better training, even while trying to discredit them as a solution to the problem of joblessness...
...Taken together, this constituency represents "a significant grassroots force for full employment," says Splain...
...During the summer of 1978 and into the fall, specific organizing models and targets were developed, including efforts to get more summer jobs for city youth, better security for CETA workers, and expanded job and training opportunities for welfare recipients...
...In some com'The "community organizing" which went on in the 1960s too often focused on turf...' munities, ACE and the Service Employes International Union, which represents CETA workers in a number of cities, have reached an understanding to regard ACE membership as complementary to, rather than competitive with, regular union membership...
...The potential volatility of jobless teen-agers during big-city summers is well known, and may account for some of the success enjoyed by Jobs and Justice...
...Corporate groundbreaking last September was visited by the newly formed Jobs Action Council, organized by Carolina Action in concert with Jobs and Justice...
...Official applications were sent to Council members, and IBM finally undertook to hire 300 Charlotte residents and to work with local businesses to establish training programs...
...Currently, CETA is the only area where Jobs and Justice and major union interests might directly overlap, though most CETA workers belong to no union at all...
...We're trying to force that program to be what it can be" — a demonstration of the kind of public-service jobs program needed in a full-employment economy...
...In Philadelphia, which had 12,000 summer job openings for 60,000 applicants, a thousand youths marched through the streets to demand more...
...Jobs and Justice seeks similar support for its welfare efforts...
...The group demanded that 75 per cent of the IBM jobs go to local unemployed...
...IBM is planning to move its major operations from New York and California to Charlotte...
...Very few people are looking at this constituency...
...That effort foundered, but the need remains — and so does the potential, for the constituency perceived by Jobs and Justice is the one that will bear the heaviest brunt of the economic and political hard times ahead...
...CETA funds have been used to create a relatively limited number of temporary jobs in areas of especially high unemployment...
...The unemployed, low-wage workers, welfare recipients, city youth — Jobs and Justice seeks to organize each category around immediate interests...
...Its style recalls some of the organizing efforts of the 1960s, but its constituency is one usually ignored during that decade...
...The same goal applies to the unemployed...
...Through local organizing, Jobs and Justice hopes to build the clout needed "to make the unemployed a more visible and potent political force," as an internal background paper explains...
...Do these jobs even exist...
...The 'community organizing' which went on in the 1960s too often focused on turf — the neighborhood, city, or state...
...Jobs and Justice seeks to work with such groups as part of the effort to achieve national restructuring of employment policy...
...Regardless of such questions, CETA is, for the present, the Federal job program...
...Jobs and Justice combines the direct-action approach of welfare rights organizing with the growth of local chapters consisting of specific target groups...
...While assuring a few more months' pay for thousands of CETA workers is a victory in itself, Jobs and Justice recognizes that CETA raises broader issues about the structure of our economy...
...In New Orleans, ACE won a delay in the planned lay-off of 1,000 CETA workers...
...Officially, more than seven million Americans are out of work: If part-time and discouraged workers were properly counted, the figure would be twice as high...
...Instead it's a combination of busywork and patronage...
...The new CETA act provides jobs for about 650,000 Americans, a small percentage of the unemployed...
...CETA could be a model for public service employment," says Jobs and Justice director Bert De Leeuw...
...Jobs and Justice organized the Association of CETA Employes (ACE) primarily around the issue of terminations...
...Though such projects might provide steady, beneficial jobs to many workers, the Federal Government has been reluctant to support public projects which compete with "private enterprise" or which, by guaranteeing decent jobs, may increase the strength of workers in their dealings with management...
...After posting a string of "No Jobs Here" signs, the marchers ended up back at City Hall — where the city announced it had just managed to obtain Federal funding for an additional 500 summer jobs...
...Jobs and Justice organizers believe this alignment of objectives makes their efforts all the more timely...
...We're saying that you organize a constituency for decent jobs and income regardless of where it is...
...But the new movement also proved capable of scoring distinct victories for a group barely organized or even recognized — CETA workers...
...It represents the "secondary labor force" — those who work in low-paying, generally menial, and often temporary jobs...
...What happens when their eighteen-month appointments expire...
...Jobs and Justice Organizing a constituency that has largely been ignored Phil Primack About 400 teen-agers marched on Boston's City Hall last year to protest restrictions on a Federally funded summer job program...
...Where such overlap does occur, however, Jobs and Justice organizers are seeking understandings with the local unions...
...A Jobs and Justice program in Charlotte, North Carolina, indicates the kind of direct action the organization has in mind...
...On a national scale, the Jobs and Justice goal of supporting and improving public service employment matches the goal of organized labor...
...Have they been adequately trained for decent jobs in the private sector...
...Jobs and Justice is still trying to develop strategies to organize the unemployed, a group De Leeuw calls our "toughest group to organize...
...In Boston, another 1,000 workers won six-month extensions when ACE successfully contended that the training and placement services offered by CETA were so inadequate that the scheduled layoffs would be unjust...
...Most recipients would prefer to be off welfare, but instead of the "forced labor" schemes now urged for welfare recipients, Jobs and Justice wants job training that leads to real jobs with decent wages and working conditions...
Vol. 43 • April 1979 • No. 4
