Frances Fox Piven, “Welfare and Work”

“Welfare and work”

Frances Fox Piven

Social Justice; Spring 1998; 25, 1; Criminal Justice Periodicals pg. 67 [PDF]

 

THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT THE BEARING OF THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK

Opportunity Act (PRWOA) of 1996 on labor markets, and especially on

the low-wage labor market. The nationwide debate that climaxed with the

rollback of federal welfare responsibilities ignored this aspect of welfare policy.

Instead, arguments fastened on questions of personal morality. A lax and toogenerous

welfare system was said to lead women to shun work in favor of habitual

idleness and dependency. Welfare was also said to undermine sexual and family

morality. Together these charges spurred something like a grand national revival

movement to restore moral compulsion to the lives of the poor. Yet, throughout

the long history of relief or welfare, charges that relief encouraged immorality

always accompanied measures that worsened the terms of work for broad swaths

of the population, as I have been at pains to argue elsewhere in work with Richard

Cloward.  Here I will show that this episode of reform is no different.

Frances Fox Piven, “The Link Between Welfare Reform and the Labor Market”

“The Link Between Welfare Reform and the Labor Market”

Francis Fox Piven, 1999 [PDF]

I’m very glad to be here. Ed Sparer was my friend and I want

to join in honoring him. And I’m also glad for a chance to talk

about welfare policy, and its implications for social justice in our

society.

The press touts welfare reform as a great success because the

rolls are down from their peak, by 44%.1 Why is that a cause for

celebration? Because the main argument in the campaign against

welfare is that a too-liberal welfare system has had perverse effects

on the personal morality of the women and children who receive

welfare. Those presumed effects include lax sexual and

childbearing behavior; the idea that women spawn babies to get

on welfare, and that when welfare is available, the men who father

those babies can easily walk away. Even more important, a

too-liberal welfare system was said to make it possible for women

to drop out of the labor force. Those charges, which became more

and more heated as the campaign against welfare went on,

sparked a kind of national revival movement to restore moral

compulsion to the lives of poor women.2

Every Mother is a Working Mother Network, “Caring Work Counts! Mothers Challenge Advocates & the Poverty Lobby”

“Caring Work Counts! Mothers Challenge Advocates & the Poverty Lobby”

Every Mother is a Working Mother Network

Every Mother is a Working Mother Network (EMWM) campaigns to establish that raising children and caring work is work, and that the time mothers spend raising children, and the economic value of their work be included in our right to welfare and other resources.  We campaign for resources to enable a mother to raise her own children full-time or to also work outside the home. We are a national multiracial grassroots network from different backgrounds and situations.

Ellen Reese, “But Who Will Watch the Children? State and Local Campaigns to Improve Child Care Policies”

“But Who Will Watch the Children? State and Local Campaigns to Improve Child Care Policies”

Ellen Reese

Intimate Labors Conference, UCSB, 2007 [PDF]

Note to readers: This paper is a draft of Chapter 5 from a book manuscript, They Say
Cutback, We Say Fight Back! Welfare Reform Activism in an Era of Retrenchment. This
book focuses on struggles over welfare policies after passage of the 1996 federal welfare
reform act in two states–California and Wisconsin– and the two largest cities in those
states. As I explain in an earlier chapter, the information for this chapter comes from
various sources, including participant observation, interviews with activists,
organizational literature, and media coverage of relevant events.

Although the 1996 welfare reform act largely cut back government assistance to
low-income families, it led to expansions in publicly subsidized child care.1 Putting poor
mothers to work meant that someone else would have to take care of their children. In
1997, an estimated 3.5 million additional children were expected to need subsidized child
care due to the implementation of welfare reform, on top of the 7 million already
receiving it.2 To ease the transition from welfare to work, politicians at all levels invested
to expand and improve the subsidized child care system. Congress authorized more
federal funds for child care for low-income families through the Child Care and
Development Fund and TANF.3 Head Start programs were also expanded.4 President
Clinton’s 1997 White House Conference on Child Care also drew attention to the need to
expand and improve the nation’s child care system and to enhance child care workers’
training and earnings. State legislatures and local governments also increased their
investments in child care to help meet the growing demand for these services.5 By 2002,
33 states were spending more in state and federal funds on child care than on cash
assistance for poor families.6 Despite these increases, subsidized child care programs
were insufficient to meet the demand for them, which was growing as maternal
employment increased and real wages stagnated and declined for most Americans.7

Nora Connor, “Welfare, Workfare, Alienation: Early Marx and Late Capitalism”

“Welfare, Workfare, Alienation: Early Marx and Late Capitalism”

Nora Connor

Bad Subjects Issue #53 [January 2001]

 

Welfare, Workfare, Alienation: Early Marx and Late Capitalism

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In 1996 Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), making good on President Clinton’s campaign promises to “end welfare as we know it.” The changes brought about by this legislation are significant. This essay examines the new work requirements and the expansion of the “workfare” program resulting from the 1996 legislation as cases of alienated labor. After a description of the new rules of welfare and of some of the work that is performed under these rules, we move on to look at the concept of alienated labor itself. Some of the questions asked include, what aspects of Marx’s extensive theory are most useful for understanding the welfare reform-labor connection? How are the concepts of labor, production and commodity different for the contemporary example than for those examples Marx used? And, are there elements of the welfare/workfare situation that can’t be adequately critiqued as “alienated labor”?