WORKFARE: IT ISN'T FAIR AND IT DOESN'T WORK
Udesky, Laurie
WORKFARE BY LAURIE UDESKY Romelia Carrillo is a California suc-cess story. The mother of three children and a six-year welfare recipient, she landed a job as an on-call dietician's aide through...
...The concern about latch-key children led one child-care agency in Kern County, California, to start up a children's hotline in 1984...
...Holly Bailey of San Mateo is among this lucky 3 per cent...
...A single mother with two children who receives $716 monthly in welfare benefits, for example, would need to earn twice that to cover the added costs of child care, transportation, payroll taxes, and other new expenses...
...It promotes jobs, but doesn't create them...
...The caseworker told me, 'We have no sympathy for humanities students...
...Bailey now earns $1,800 a month as a registered nurse...
...Welfare officials don't respect you for pursuing a college education...
...McKeever thinks GAIN may create a secondary work force easily exploitable by employers who could reduce wages, "knowing that women and men in GAIN must take the job even if it pays less than their welfare checks...
...But it's been very hard...
...The county initially refused to pay for child care for 89 per cent of its potential GAIN participants, stating in an internal document that the homes had "elder sibling^) or a second parent" or friends to babysit "at no cost...
...Many people won't get the education they need to be independent," says Solano County's John Ritter...
...is very happy to have her job...
...A couple of times, I've had to leave the kids alone...
...Welfare recipients with one child would need to earn more than $6.44 an hour just to reach the same standard of living they had on welfare, the study points out...
...When Republican Governor George Deukmejian signed the workfare bill into law in 1985, he claimed it would "give welfare recipients the tools to break out of the endless trap of welfare dependency...
...It's an assembly line, and you can't live on those wages...
...It doesn't take into account the trend away from union jobs that have provided security to families for generations, and the trend toward service jobs with no security and often no benefits...
...Her monthly expenses, she says, include $330 for rent, $137 for car payments, and $65 to $70 for gas and electricity...
...Yet the program is not succeeding in doing even that...
...If you want to go to nursing school, though, we'll pay for it.' Basically, they expect you to give up any right to choose your own career...
...The scarcity of available child care means she must depend on relatives and informal babysitters when she goes to work...
...But the kinds of jobs we have here are service jobs running $5.05 an hour...
...The states should do more than pour millions of dollars into programs that "train" people for jobs that don't pay enough to support a family...
...They saw it as a way to get them off the welfare rolls...
...But far too often GAIN officials fall back on "job-skills" classes that stress a vague melange of positive thinking and grooming tips...
...A brightly colored newsletter published by the social services department in Fresno featured her story...
...She has worked as news and features editor of her college newspaper, won several scholarships, and received many straight-A report cards...
...The program paid for her child care, transportation, and two uniforms, she says...
...they seem to resent it...
...It requires all parents whose children are six or older and who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children to find jobs or work for their welfare checks...
...By transferring responsibility for GAIN to an amorphous "economy," Agnos sidesteps tough questions about the program itself...
...A woman who balks "will lose her adult right to spend her [welfare] check as she chooses...
...Talbot, whose child was born while she was still in high school, encountered similar roadblocks from the welfare department in getting her bachelor's degree...
...Other headaches plague administrators as well...
...Employees were so overloaded that they couldn't get their jobs done," says Sherill Perkins, an official of the Service Employees International Union, which represents the caseworkers...
...They're training us to become clerks and busboys," says Kevin Aslanian of the California Coalition for Welfare Rights...
...But a talk with Carrillo paints a different picture...
...The National Fire Protection Association, for example, reports that more than 20 per cent of all multiple-death fires involve unattended or unsupervised children...
...There's no way the taxpayers would want to pay for it...
...GAIN requires, by law, that all child-care providers be paid...
...It really made a difference to have that support...
...The law does not limit the type of higher education a GAIN participant can aspire to, but GAIN officials apparently think that poor welfare recipients, unlike middle-class or wealthy students, do not deserve to enter a profession by earning a master's degree—in anything...
...A study by Alameda County, cited by the San Francisco Chronicle, backs up RitIt's an assembly line, and you can't live on those wages...
...This finding is not news to Dion Aroner, an aide to Assemblyman Tom Bates, a long-time critic of workfare programs...
...Welfare officials originally estimated that 15 per cent of those in GAIN would need remedial education...
...And although the state expects to spend more than $200 million a year on work-fare, realistic welfare officials expect few GAIN participants to leave the welfare system...
...California, however, has invested neither the planning nor the resources to make good on these promises...
...It's a real problem because a single parent with two kids needs at least $8 or $10 an hour just to survive," he says...
...In addition to shuttling most participants into low-paying, dead-end jobs, GAIN is operating in a bureaucratic thicket...
...I was never given any support...
...We're also offering color-coordination classes...
...I don't see how a woman like myself with two kids can get a $5-an-hour job and still pay for child care and medical expenses...
...Welfare officials, she says, "wanted me to get a job as a counselor with my B.A., but I couldn't feed my three kids on those wages...
...Wendy Wayne, director of the Community Connection for Childcare, reports, "We have been receiving 600 calls a month from children who are terrified, lonely, or feel isolated...
...We don't expect everyone to leave welfare...
...It's not good, to leave kids alone...
...But as the case of Romelia Carrillo demonstrates, it is hardly a solution at all...
...You can't find a better job until you start with $5 an hour," says GAIN deputy director Carl Williams...
...The young mother confirms her intense desire to work and be independent of welfare...
...I was told—and I've heard this so many times—'We're not out to subsidize your college education,'" Talbot says...
...The state will handle all her money...
...A thirty-five-year-old former welfare mother, Bailey was able to finish her nursing program through GAIN...
...Some GAIN officials say they want welfare recipients to reach—but only as high as the welfare department thinks they should...
...After three months on the job, Carrillo, like all GAIN participants, had her child-care subsidy cut off...
...She describes her search for child care as "frustrating and exhausting...
...One time my six-year-old flooded the bathtub, and the water went all over the carpet in the hall and into the downstairs apartment...
...Social workers have as many as 200 GAIN clients each, far too many to serve effectively...
...Her voice drops in concern as she talks about her children...
...But GAIN doesn't allow participants more than two years of schooling or professional training, so it has met with skepticism even within its own ranks...
...She has been trained in many aspects of the hospital food service, including setting up trays, delivering them to tables, clean-up, washing the pots and pans, and putting the dishes away...
...So now DSS has gotten caught with its pants down...
...I thought, 'They've got to be kidding!' " says Carevich...
...If one of my children is sick again, I'm afraid I'll be fired...
...Billed as a model program, it has caught the eye of lawmakers across the country...
...Assemblyman Ernie Konnyu, the Republican who was the main author of the GAIN legislation, says the program will provide welfare recipients with "training and self-reliance so they can leave welfare and reduce taxpayer costs...
...In one California county, a GAIN mother of three fought for—and won—the right to go to graduate school in psychology to become a therapist...
...Diana Hembree and Angela Kocherga assisted with research...
...In some counties, it drops as low as $4...
...It's so ironic, because I'm doing everything in my power to educate myself and get a good-paying job so I can get off welfare forever...
...The program can help people with two years of college finish their degrees—and that's great...
...If they hadn't been able to reach me at school, they would have been home all alone, bleeding...
...The question is, can the economy handle them...
...A lot of GAIN participants are getting lost in the system...
...We need to get the kinds of jobs men get and get paid what they get paid," she says...
...I don't see them that much now...
...Heidi Strassburger of the Child Care Law Center in San Francisco thinks the GAIN legislation is seriously flawed for cutting off child-care money only three months after a parent finds work...
...We may tell our clients, 'Sure, go out and become a bus-boy,' but we try to give them the motivation to hang in there and become a chef...
...As participants prepare to work, it promises, they will receive transportation, subsidized child care, and up to two years of training and education...
...A voluntary program would also recognize a parent's right to stay home and take care of her children...
...As things now stand, many women and men in GAIN must take the job that the welfare department thinks they should, even if it means earning less than their net income from welfare...
...One person who has is Marcelle Hall, a mother of three who fought to get into GAIN...
...The large number of people volunteering for the program has already ended that debate...
...I like my job," she Laurie Udesky, who reports forPacifica and National Public Radio, is an associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco...
...The politicians, in their rush to pass GAIN as an "emergency statute" in 1985, neglected to investigate what kind of training the state's welfare recipients would need to become self-sufficient...
...It isn't fair and it doesn't work says, "but I've been late to work several times because one of my children is ill...
...But then," she says, the welfare department "cut off my food stamps, and me and my kids had to live on eggs and potatoes...
...We'd be better off on welfare...
...In October 1986, Carrillo was chosen "GAIN Employee of the Month...
...When I was getting welfare," she says, "it seemed like you were penalized for trying to go to school and do better in your life...
...No real surveys were done to see how many people would need remedial education...
...The few day-care centers she found had long waiting lists, and Hall had grave reservations about the home-care providers she interviewed...
...This program destroys the myth that people on welfare are lazy, shiftless, and don't want to work," asserts Assemblyman Agnos, who is now running for mayor of San Francisco...
...Bates opposes GAIN, says Aroner, because it is "not voluntary" and sets aside no money to develop jobs...
...The mother of three children and a six-year welfare recipient, she landed a job as an on-call dietician's aide through the state's workfare program, GAIN—short for Greater Avenues for Independence...
...More typical, though, is the case of Linda Carevich, a mother in her thirties who enrolled in GAIN voluntarily in November 1986...
...She then had to squeeze an extra $67 a week for child care out of an already-strapped family budget...
...When you're late to work, they count it as a sick day, and I've already used up all my sick time...
...Sometimes child-care arrangements fall through at the last minute...
...That amounts to a $9.25-an-hour job to reach the same subsistence standard of living she had on welfare—a wage far higher than that earned by most GAIN graduates...
...I didn't trust them to take care of my kids...
...But GAIN has been wonderfully supportive...
...Whatever the good intentions, GAIN has little to distinguish it from unsuccessful workfare programs in other states...
...For these reasons, she says, GAIN "may actually create a larger pool of latchkey children" whose safety is jeopardized...
...Mariana Talbot, who was interviewed for this article, is an intern at the Center...
...California's Department of Social Services reports that the median wage 'We need to get the kinds of jobs men get and get paid what they get paid.' for GAIN employees is $5 an hour...
...Now a state study shows the figure is actually 60 per cent—and counties are not prepared to foot the bill...
...Because of this, my eight-year-old and eleven-year-old have been home alone all this time...
...She adds that she intends to hire a lawyer, if necessary, to obtain the level of education she feels she needs to compete in a tight job market...
...If, as Governor Deukmejian says, "workfare is a bridge, and all you have to do is cross it," we ought to make sure the bridge is leading somewhere...
...GAIN is supposed to find work for thousands, mostly single mothers on the welfare rolls...
...Unsurprisingly, fewer than 50 per cent of participants were able to get off welfare after finding work...
...With workfare under way in sixteen counties, GAIN has found jobs for only 3,788 of its 27,800 participants...
...Licensed child-care facilities with openings are scarce or nonexistent in many parts of the state, and that presents another problem for GAIN mothers, even though program administrators downplay it...
...But the program is more hype than substance...
...Many politicians, including some Presidential candidates, are looking to GAIN and other similar programs as solutions to the welfare problem...
...Such sanctions are under challenge by the Western Poverty Law Center, which has filed suit charging that a GAIN participant has the right to refuse a job if it means a net loss in income...
...That's why we call this program PAIN—which stands for Painful Avenues to Nowhere...
...Some women must be forced to participate in GAIN, he says, "just as we do with [children] in public education...
...We want to teach people that it isn't appropriate to wear fuzzy slippers and curlers to a job interview," says one welfare official...
...This is an employment program...
...But if you dropped out of school in the eighth grade, two years of schooling won't give you the skills you need to get a good-paying job...
...While enrolled in classes, Hall got the call she had been dreading: "My kids had broken a glass door and were seriously injured...
...The GAIN program has been badly oversold, according to Casey McKeever of the Law Center...
...Williams says he has heard "child-care shortages talked about ad nauseam, but I haven't heard of people who have had a problem...
...Most disturbing is the fear that she'll lose the job overnight...
...The system is definitely not set up to support women who have higher ambitions," she says...
...The kids really miss me...
...Assemblyman Art Agnos, one of the liberal Democrats who joined conservatives in pushing GAIN, calls the program "the most advanced, progressive, state-of-the-art reform of the welfare system in the nation...
...Faltering start or not, GAIN supporters are quick to defend the program, citing the nonmonetary benefits...
...Single parents who work have much higher expenses than do those who stay at home...
...Their places seemed run down and not set up well," she says...
...Its creators didn't see it as a way to get families out of poverty," Aroner says...
...The most she has made is $700 a month...
...Ritter and some other concerned officials have plans to try placing GAIN graduates in nontraditional jobs, including union apprenticeships...
...But the program is incapable of helping the poor in general...
...At her GAIN orientation, however, Carevich says she was told to apply for entry-level clerical jobs, bank-teller and child-care aide positions, and other low-paying jobs...
...Pressed further, Williams estimates that only 3 per cent of GAIN graduates will be able to make it off the welfare rolls...
...GAIN'S low wages reflect a Catch-22 problem with workfare nationwide: A recent Federal report on programs in thirty-eight states reveals that most participants were forced to take dismally low-paying jobs, with a median hourly wage of $4.14...
...If, after three months, the woman is "still recalcitrant"—GAIN literature calls her a "second-time offender"—Agnos says, "she will lose the adult portion of her grant...
...Asked how GAIN'S single parents will be able to support a family on $5 an hour, deputy director Williams says, "Your question assumes people will be leaving welfare...
...The public is being wooed by slick advertisements produced by Louis and Saul, a Santa Monica firm that will be paid $1.5 million for selling GAIN over the next three years...
...It is illegal to force parents in GAIN "to take a job where the net income does not meet the basic needs of themselves and their children," concludes the complaint...
...Her hours are irregular, however, and at times her take-home pay dips to $400 a month...
...But when she asked a GAIN caseworker about graduate school, she was told to take her dreams elsewhere...
...Mariana Talbot, a college senior and twenty-three-year-old single mother on AFDC, wants to go to graduate school in journalism and become a reporter...
...With a high-school education and two children, she hoped to get a job as a laborer or some other position that pays well...
...It's time that lawmakers in California and elsewhere create a voluntary jobs-training program and jobs to go with it...
...after starting a job, they may lose most or all of their subsidized food, housing, and medical benefits...
...It's my children who would suffer...
...He explains that many workers will be eligible for reduced benefits...
...The lack of well-paying jobs for GAIN graduates also worries John Ritter, GAIN manager for the welfare department in Solano County...
...This program has everything conceivable to help people get work, but it's unlikely that unskilled, or modestly skilled, people can get $10 an hour at their first job...
...For many people," he says, "GAIN will provide some useful services, such as education and job searches, and give them more self-confidence...
...I'm struggling and I know I can't expect welfare to always pay my way," she says...
...That's why we call this program PAIN- Painful Avenues to Nowhere.' ter...
...If they refuse and lose their appeal in a lengthy "conciliation process," they can lose their aid...
...No, GAIN will not pay for graduate school," says deputy director Williams...
...Despite the dangers of leaving children unattended, welfare officials in Kern County have tried improperly to cut corners on funding child care for GAIN parents...
...She is looking forward to a long and steady association with the hospital...
...Many GAIN caseworkers say they're proud of clients who have passed a high-school-equivalency test for the first time...
...In Fresno, angry eligibility workers went on strike for four days last March to protest intolerable working conditions in the GAIN program...
...It's such a paternalistic attitude, as if all women on welfare should be forced to do traditional women's jobs, whether they want to or not...
...Strassburger also worries that parents in GAIN may not know of their right to paid child care—or may be afraid to assert themselves...
...Carrillo, the article reports, "takes two buses to ride to work, but is glad to have a job to ride to...
...In what may be the best-kept secret of the campaign year, the state's Department of Social Services estimates that 97 per cent of all GAIN graduates will remain on welfare...
...We're not going to pay for a graduate program in basket-weaving...
...Defending sanctions against GAIN parents who miss classes or refuse to take a job without "good cause," Assemblyman Agnos goes so far as to compare welfare mothers to school-aged children...
...And the kinds of jobs the workfare program offers can barely support one person, much less a family...
...We now have people who are trained, willing, and ready to work," says Agnos...
...The Department of Social Services had very little data on clients," says Bates aide Aroner...
Vol. 51 • December 1987 • No. 12
