Philosophy :     Workfare

"Society's Restraint to Social Reform"
	
	Of the many chatted words in the social reform vocabulary of Canadians today, 
the term workfare seems to stimulate much debate and emotion.  Along with the 
notions of self-sufficiency, employability enhancement, and work 
disincentives, it is the concept of workfare that causes the most tension 
between it's government and business supporters and it's anti-poverty and 
social justice critics.  In actuality, workfare is a contraction of the 
concept of "working for welfare" which basically refers to the requirement 
that recipients perform unpaid work as a condition of receiving social 
assistance.
	Recent debates on the subject of welfare are far from unique.  They are all 
simply contemporary attempts to decide if we live in a just society or not.  
This debate has been a major concern throughout history.  Similarly, the 
provision of financial assistance to the able-bodied working-age poor has 
always been controversial.  
	On one side are those who articulate the feelings and views of the poor, 
namely, the Permissive Position, who see them as victims of our society and 
deserving of community support.  The problems of the poor range from personal 
(abandonment or death of the family income earner) to the social (racial 
prejudice in the job market) and economic (collapse in the market demand for 
their often limited skills due to an economic recession or shift in 
technology).  The Permissive View reveals that all participants in society are 
deserving of the unconditional legal right to social security without any 
relation to the individual's behaviour.  It is believed that any society which 
can afford to supply the basic needs of life to every individual of that 
society but does not, can be accused of imposing life-long deprivation or 
death to those needy individuals.  The reason for the needy individual being 
in that situation, whether they are willing to work, or their actions while 
receiving support have almost no weight in their ability to acquire this 
welfare support.  This view is presently not withheld in society, for if it 
was, the stereotype of the 'Typical Welfare Recipient' would be unheard of.  
	On the other side, the Individualists believe that generous aid to the poor 
is a poisoned chalice that encourages the poor to pursue a life of poverty 
opposing their own long-term interests as well of those of society in general. 
 Here, high values are placed on personal choice.  Each participant in society 
is a responsible individual who is able to make his own decisions in order to 
manipulate the progression of his own life.  In conjunction with this opinion, 
if you are given the freedom to make these decisions, then surely you must 
accept the consequences of those decisions.  An individual must also work part 
of his time for others (by means of government taxing on earned income).  
Those in society who support potential welfare recipients do not give out of 
charity, but contrastingly are forced to do it when told by the Government.  
Each person in society contains ownership of their own body and labour.  
Therefore anything earned by this body and labour in our Free Market System is 
deserved entirely by that individual.  Any means of deducting from these 
earnings to support others is equivalent to criminal activity.  Potential 
welfare recipients should only be supported by voluntary funding.  For this 
side, welfare ultimately endangers society by weakening two of it's moral 
foundations: that able-bodied adults should be engaged in some combination of 
working, learning and child rearing; and secondly, that both parents should 
assume all applicable responsibilities of raising their children.(5)
	In combination of the two previous views, the Puritan View basically involves 
the idea that within a society which has the ability to sufficiently support 
all of it's individuals, all participants in the society should have the legal 
right to Government supplied welfare benefits.  However, the individual's 
initiative to work is held strongly to this right.  Potential welfare 
recipients are classified as a responsibility of the Government.  The 
resources required to support the needy are taken by means of taxation from 
the earnings of the working public.  This generates an obligation to work.  
Hence, if an individual does not make the sacrifice of his time and energy to 
contribute their earnings to this fund, they are not entitled to acquire any 
part of it when in need unless a justifiable reason such as disability is 
present for the individual's inability to work.  The right to acquire welfare 
funds is highly conditional on how an individual accounts for his failure in 
working toward his life's progression by his own efforts.  Two strong beliefs 
of the Puritan Position are;  Firstly, those on welfare should definitely not 
receive a higher income than the working poor, and secondly, incentives for 
welfare recipients to work must be evident. 
	The distinction between the "deserving" and "non-deserving" poor is as 
evident now as it was in the Poor Laws of the 16th and 17th centuries.(1)  The 
former were the elderly, the disabled, the sick, single mothers and dependent 
children, all of whom were unable to meet their needs by participating in the 
labour force and, therefore, were considered worthy of receiving assistance.  
The latter were able-bodied adults who were often forced to do some kind of 
work as a condition of obtaining relief as a means of subsistence.  Those who 
refused this work requirement were presumably not really in need.  Throughout 
our own history of public assistance, the non-deserving poor always got 
harsher treatment and fewer benefits than their deserving counterparts. 
	Due to it's mandatory nature, historically, workfare has been viewed as a 
forceful measure.  Two other program strategies are now in use as well. 
Namely, a service strategy, and a financial strategy.(8)  The former includes 
support services for the work participant, such as counselling, child care, 
and training.  The latter includes a higher rate of benefits for those who 
participate in work programs than someone would receive from social assistance 
alone.
		To actually show that workfare does not work, we must observe the United 
States, which has had federally mandated workfare programs for welfare 
recipients since 1967.  Although the research on American workfare programs is 
inconclusive to some extent, many findings suggest that workfare is 
ineffective in reducing welfare costs and moving people from the welfare rolls 
into adequate employment. It was found that low-cost programs with few support 
services and a focus on immediate job placements had extremely limited 
effects.  These did not produce sizable savings or reduce poverty or reduce 
large numbers of people from welfare.(9)  Furthermore, While expensive 
programs with extensive supports and services were more likely to place people 
in employment, there was a definite point of diminishing returns where the 
expenses outweighed the benefits.(10)
	Even the limited success by some American workfare programs is highly 
questionable.  Largely missing from the research is the discussion of 
workfare's major limitation: The lack of available adequate jobs.  In the wide 
scheme of things, it doesn't  matter whether the program is mandatory with no 
frills or voluntary and comprehensive if there are no jobs to fill.  This is 
the "Achilles Heel" of all workfare programs.  Even if some individuals manage 
to find jobs and get off welfare, if the unemployment rate for the area does 
not change, it is obvious that there has already been a displacement of some 
people in the workforce.  What actually occurs is a shuffling of some people 
into the workforce and some out, with no net increase in the number of jobs.  
Workfare only increases the competition for jobs, it doesn't create them 
(except for those who manage and deliver the programs, generally not welfare 
recipients).  In addition, the few jobs that workfare participants do get tend 
to be either temporary, so the person returns to welfare, or low-paying with 
minimal benefits, so that people are not moved out of poverty, but merely from 
the category of "non-working poor" to "working poor".(11)
	Another issue largely ignored in Canada as well are health and safety 
conditions affecting workfare participants.  For example, in New Brunswick an 
unusually high accident rate has been reported among welfare recipients who 
took part in provincial work programs.  
	Given the overall failure of workfare programs to reduce welfare 
expenditures, reduce poverty, and move people into adequate and permanent 
jobs, workfare should not even be discussed as a viable social reform option  
today.  Politicians and the business establishment only call for workfare 
because it helps to protect their privileged positions in our society.  
Workfare serves to preserve the status quo by:
i.	creating the illusion that politicians are actually doing something 
meaningful about the deficit and welfare.
ii.	increasing the reserve pool of available labour which can be called upon 
at any time to carry out society's dangerous and menial jobs.
iii.	increasing the competition for scarce jobs, which tends to keep wages 
down and profits up.
iv.	reinforcing the attitude that people on welfare are largely responsible 
for our economic and social ills, that they are lazy, deviants who will not 
work unless forced to do so.
	Workfare creates the assumption that unemployment is caused by personal 
choice or lack of work ethic.  However, due to the fact that we have well over 
one million people in Canada actively looking for work, this is a ridiculous 
assumption.  Fifteen thousand people lined up one day in Oshawa in January to 
apply for one of a few hundred possible jobs at General Motors.
	The problem is not one of a lost worth ethic or personal pathology.  The 
problem is a lack of jobs, and workfare undoubtedly does nothing to compensate 
or eliminate this problem.