Putting the Poor to Work

-- A cancer that is destroying those it should succor and threatening society itself." That is how California Governor Ronald Reagan described welfare in 1971. He has been waging war on that system of public support ever since. Now, as President, Reagan wants to eliminate the "legitimate fraud" of people who, he says, are fit to work but who qualify for the dole. His solution: workfare, a program in which able-bodied welfare recipients take community public service jobs to repay part of the value of their benefits.

Under Administration plans disclosed last week, unemployed adults who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (A.F.D.C.), the principal federal welfare payment, would be required to work for about 20 hours each week. Mothers with children under three years old and women with children ages three to six who cannot find day-care facilities would be exempt. So would the elderly and disabled. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that only about 800,000 of the 10.8 million Americans on A.F.D.C. would be affected, and they could fill jobs as day-care helpers, park attendants and school crossing guards. Each state would be required to set up its own workfare system.

Various forms of workfare have been tried before, with limited success. Reagan cites California's Community Work Experience Program, which he claims put 75,000 people to work during his tenure as Governor. Yet records show that only about 9,600 welfare recipients received jobs. "It was essentially a leaf-raking operation," says California Legislative Analyst Tom Dooley. The program was allowed to expire.

Since 1968, the Department of Labor has overseen federal Work Incentive programs (WIN), which provide job training for welfare recipients, primarily women with children. One of the most successful has been in San Antonio, where half of 150 participants were moved off the welfare rolls in a year on a budget of only $200,000. WIN offered day care to mothers. Minnesota has had a Work Equity Program (WEP) that has trained more than 6,000 unemployed. Experts estimate that for every $1,000 spent for WEP counseling, $10,000 was saved in direct welfare expenditures. Milwaukee County's Work Assistance Program, which assigned simple chores to welfare recipients, saved local taxpayers about $9 million. There is one major problem: because of Reagan's proposed budget cuts, these programs may be put out of business.

Though many Americans concur with Reagan's plan to put welfare recipients to work, some disagree with the assumptions behind such a move. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose Chicago-based Operation Push stresses hard work and self-help as the road to minority success, calls workfare "psychological warfare against poor people." Says Jackson: "It's fueling the meanness mania in this country. It suggests something negative about the character of poor people." Because there are so few jobs around, some critics fear that workfare will force welfare recipients to labor for low pay in substandard conditions.

Says Jackson: "In slavery, everyone had a job--but no one had dignity."

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