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.

BAMN Golden Gate Child Development Center (CDC) occupation

UPDATE August 29, 2010, 11:00AM PST:

Parents, Teachers, Students and Community Members Vow to Keep Childhood Development Centers (CDC’s) Open

PRESS CONFERENCE Sunday, Aug. 29, 4:00 pm
Golden Gate Child Development Center (CDC)
6232 Herzog St., near San Pablo + Alcatraz (Oakland)

TAKE ACTION this Tuesday, Aug. 31, 4:30 pm
Golden Gate Child Development Center (CDC)
6232 Herzog St., near San Pablo + Alcatraz (Oakland)

Parents, teachers, students, and community members vow to keep open the Golden Gate and Santa Fe Childhood Development Centers (CDC’s) in Oakland. They are holding a press conference today to announce their intention to mobilize a mass protest and action on Tuesday at 4:30 pm in front of Golden Gate CDC to stop them from being closed.

On Friday, the Oakland Unified School District announced that the two CDC’s in Oakland would close next week, despite finding the money to keep five other centers open that had also been scheduled for closure.

“If they found $2.4 million to keep open five of the schools, then I know they can find the money to keep my son’s school open, too. This whole fight is about the right for every child to an equal, quality, public education. We’re fighting for what Martin Luther King fought for,” said Alonie Butler, Oakland parent and BAMN supporter.

Over the course of the summer, OUSD attempted to close seven centers which run early childhood and before and after school programs for children, sparking a community-wide movement and series of protests, marches, and occupations. That movement kept all the centers open until the end of August. Last Friday, when the District announced its intention to close Golden Gate and Santa Fe CDC’s, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) organized teachers, students, and parents to sit-in and occupy Golden Gate CDC to keep those centers open.

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

SF Chronicle, “Oakland keeping 5 child care centers open”

“Oakland keeping 5 child care centers open”

Kevin Fagan, SF Chronicle  [August 28, 2010]

Parents and activists fighting to save a string of low-income child care centers in Oakland won a partial victory Friday when the school district came up with enough funding to keep most of the centers open – but protesters are now occupying the two that have been shut, demanding that they, too, be preserved.

Members of the community group By Any Means Necessary said they will stay in the two centers through the weekend and open them up on Monday whether the district likes it or not.

“We’ve got to draw a line with early childhood education,” Yvette Felarca of Oakland, an organizer with the group, said as she prepared to bed down for the night in the Golden Gate Childhood Development Center on Herzog Street, one of the two facilities closed as of 5 p.m. Friday. “We want the school district, the governor and Sacramento to know they’ve got to stop playing political games with our children.

SF Chronicle, “7 Oakland day care centers may close” (Aug. 27, 2010)

“7 Oakland day care centers may close”

Kevin Fagan, SF Chronicle [August 27, 2010]

The tots looked happy nibbling on snacks and playing tag around the tables, but for the adults at Jefferson Childhood Development Center in Oakland, Thursday afternoon was anything but fun and games.

Today may be the last day of operation for this full-service, low-income day care center and six others in the city. And as they stood contemplating that probability, the moms, dads and teachers said they have no idea what their alternatives will be.

Whatever they are, they’re bound to be either inconvenient or much more expensive, the adults all agreed. If there are alternatives at all.

“If they take this place away, I guess I’ll have to go to a family day care of some kind, and I don’t really know yet how I’ll pay for that,” said Tonya Hughes, worry lining her face as she watched her 7-year-old son, Andre Powell, laughing with his pals in the center at 40th Avenue and San Juan Street.

“If you’re trying to pay for mortgage, PG&E, food and child care, something has to give,” said Hughes, a social worker. “What do they want parents to do?” 

KCRA, “Budget Protesters Block Major Road Near Capitol” (Aug. 18, 2010)

“Budget Protesters Block Major Road Near Capitol”

KCRA video [Aug. 18, 2010]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Protesters upset over proposed cuts to California’s budget blocked a major road near the Capitol in downtown Sacramento Wednesday afternoon.

Sacramento police arrested 22 people on misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest. Sgt. Norm Leong said one person was booked into jail on suspicion of inciting disorder, while the others were cited and released.

The intersection of 11th and L streets was blocked by about 100 demonstrators, who set up tents in the middle of L Street.

They also placed stretchers in the road.

Right in the middle of the street, the protesters set up an effigy of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger with a sign around its neck saying “Cuts Kill.”

Organizers said they planned civil disobedience to get the governor’s attention about his proposed budget cuts to social services.

“People need to see this is what’s going to happen if these cuts go through,” demonstrator Robin Earth said. “I know it’s against the law, but what should be against the law is people being made homeless.

L Street reopened just after 4 p.m. in time for rush-hour traffic.

No injuries were reported.

California Watch, “Child care providers struggle without a state budget” (Aug. 17, 2010)

“Child care providers struggle without a state budget”

Mandy Hofmockel

California Watch [August 17, 2010]

Without a state budget, child care programs funded through school districts, nonprofit organizations and licensed individuals are facing financial hardships as they try to “float” their budgets until state funds are let loose.

Some child care providers have been forced to close, and others are considering closing in the coming weeks if no budget is signed, county child care coordinators said.

In his May revision of the 2010-11 budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed eliminating about $1.2 billion in need-based, subsidized child care. The governor’s proposed budget included state preschool, but eliminated about 142,000 slots for subsidized child care, according to the revision.

H.D. Palmer, state Department of Finance spokesman, said the now-dead proposal to remove child care from the budget came about because of billions of dollars in lost savings in May relative to the January budget due to “legislative inaction,” he said. Palmer said the governor’s proposal to remove child care from the budget was no longer “on the table” since the Legislature has rejected it.

Martha A. Ackelsberg, “Organizing Women: First Steps”

“Organizing Women: First Steps”

Martha A. Ackelsberg

excerpt from Free Women of Spain: anarchism and the struggle for the emancipation of women [1991]

Lucia and Mercedes were instrumental in beginning Mujeres Libres in Madrid. Amparo joined them on the editorial board of Mujeres Libres and later became active in Barcelona as the director of Mujeres Libres’ education and training institute, the Casal de la Dona Treballdora. All three were spurred to action by their prior experiences in male-dominated organizations of the anarcho-syndicalist movement. But the groundwork for the organization was also being laid by women around the country, many of whom were virtually unaware of one another’s existence.

In Barcelona, for example, Soledad Estorach, who was active both in her ateneo and in the CNT, had also found existing movement organizations inadequate to engage women workers on equal terms with men.

In Catalona, at least, the dominant position was that men and women should both be involved. But the problem was that the men didn’t know how to get women involved as activists. Both men and most women thought of women in a secondary status. For most men, I think. The ideal situation would be to have a companera who did not oppose their ideas, but whose private life would be more or less like other women. They wanted to be activists twenty-four hours a day-and in that context, of course, it’s impossible to have equality …. Men got so involved that the women were left behind, almost of necessity. Especially, for example, when he would be taken to jail. Then she would have to take care of the children, work to support the family, visit him in jail, etc. That, the companeras were very good at! But for us, that was not enough. That was not activism!!!

Precarias a la Deriva, “A Very Careful Strike – Four hypotheses.”

“A Very Careful Strike – Four hypotheses.”

Precarias a la Deriva

Translated by Franco Ingrassia and Nate Holdren.

Feb. 2005. [PDF]

Translators’ introduction
We are happy to present here a translation of an article by the Precarias a la Deriva, a militant research collective based in Madrid, Spain. We have translated the title of the piece as “A Very Careful Strike.” The title of the piece, “Una huelga de mucho cuidado” is a pun in Spanish, and as such is difficult to render into English. It means, at the same time, something very carefully done, something dangerous (something around which one should take care), as well as referring to the proposal of a strike by those who carry out both paid and unpaid caring labor.

Contra Costa Times, “Budget cuts threaten child care as parents battle costs” (Aug. 13, 2010)

“Budget cuts threaten child care as parents battle costs”

By Rick Radin

Contra Costa Times [08/13/2010]

Pittsburg resident Tamra Loomis has been receiving a subsidy from the state to pay her child care bill since she lost her job in December 2007, but she’s worried it may soon disappear.

The 31-year-old has been training to be a medical assistant and wants to become a nurse. But she could lose the $157-per-month subsidy for her 3-year-old son, Exaiden, if California eliminates the CalWORKs welfare-to-work program.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has targeted the program for elimination as part of his plan to balance the state budget.

“I’ve been to three ‘Stand for Kids’ marches in Sacramento (to save CalWORKs),” said Loomis, a graphic designer for a sign company in Antioch. “(Providers) want $180 to $200 a week per child, and that would be my entire paycheck if I had to pay it all myself.”

Selma James, “Women, the Unions and Work, Or…What Is Not To Be Done”

“Women, the Unions and Work, Or…What Is Not To Be Done”

Selma James

Radical America Vol. 7 no. 4-5, 1973. [PDF]

This pamphlet has been published by the Notting Hill (a working-class district in West London -ed.) Womens Liberation Workshop group. It was written by one of our members and presented as a paper at the National Confer­ence of Women at Manchester March 25-26. 1972. While many of us have minor or major disagreements with the paper. we feel that the discussion which it generated at the conference was of such importance to the future of the movement that it should be widely read and the discussion continue.

The demands at the end of the paper aroused most interest at the conference. and were discussed. added to and modi­fied there. But there may have been some misunderstand­ing about their purpose. They are not a statement of what we want. finally. to have. They are not a plan for an ideal society. and a society based on them would not cease to be oppressive. Ultimately the only demand which is not co­optable is the armed population demanding the end of cap­italism. But we feel that at this moment these demands can be a force against what capital wants and for what we want. They are intended to mobilize women both “inside-and “outside-the women’s liberation movement. They could provide a perspective which would affect decisions about local and national struggles. After discussion and modifi­cation they could become integrated and far-reaching goals which the women’s movement could come to stand for. A vote taken on the final day at Manchester decided that the demands would be raised on the first day of the next conference. Many groups are planning local discussions before that time.

April 8, 1972.

Jacklyn Cock, “Trapped Workers: The Case of Domestic Workers in South Africa”

“Trapped Workers: The Case of Domestic Workers in South Africa”

Jacklyn Cock

excerpt from Patriarchy and Class: African Women in the Home and Workforce, Sharon B. Stichter and Jane L. Parpart, eds. Boulder & London: Westview Press, pp. 205-219, [1988]

In addition to lessening their employer’s sense of social isolation at the cost of exacerbating their own, many domestic servants take considerable responsibility for the care of their employer’s children.

She gets the children up in the morning, gives them their breakfast, walks the youngest to nursery school, has our lunch ready for us when we return.

This responsibility for child care involves one of the central contradictions in the institution of domestic servants. Several servants interviewed stressed that they had to look after two families and neglect their own in the process.

We leave our children early in the morning to look after other women’s families and still they don’t appreciate us.

We have to leave our children and look after our madam’s children. We have not time to look after them when they are sick.

It is black women who suffer most from the neglect of creches by the state. Furthermore, black women generally and domestic servants specifically are most vulnerable to dismissal on the grounds of pregnancy (Cook et al, 1983). One respondent said that the employment of domestic servants explained “why white people’s children don’t grow up criminals. It is not from having everything they need, but having nannies who watch them every minute of the day and instill discipline.” Often the person looking after the servant’s children is a daughter who is kept out of school to do so. This perpetuates a vicious circle of povety, inadequate child care and interrupted education among blacks’ children (especially females) while white children benefit from the attention of two mothers.

Molyneux has emphasized that it is the work of child care which “is of the most benefit to the capitalist state” (Molyneux 1979, p. 25). Child care is expensive if it emphasizes child development rather than custodial care. Therefore in advanced capitalist societies “the only large scale possibility that could bring  about the socialization of child care would be for the state to expand its provision” (CSE 1975, p. 14). But state organized institutions for the reproduction of labor power are financed by state expropriation of surplus value. Thus since the state provision of childcare centers, kindergartens and creches would add to capital’s costs for reproducing the labor force, this would only be likely to occur in a period of rapid capital accumulation and consequent increased productivity. In such a situation capital would gain from releasing women for wage labor, because that would expand the labor force producing surplus value. But in South Africa the availability of cheap, black domestic labor creates this flexibility, and women can easily be incorporated or expelled from the labor force according to the pace of capital accumulation. Hence this is not a demand likely to be made on the state by the white working class.

Maxine Molyneux, “Beyond the Domestic Labour Debate”

“Beyond the Domestic Labour Debate”

Maxine Molyneux

New Left Review I 116, [July-August 1979]

It is nearly a decade since the first texts in the recent domestic labour debate appeared, and since then over fifty articles have been published on the subject of housework in the British and American socialist press alone.¹ This interest in domestic labour has arisen from a wide range of orientations, both feminist and Marxist, yet despite this variety they all involve a common underlying assump­tion: namely that investigation of this previously neglected topic can contribute to an understanding of women’s subordination and to the formulation of a politics adequate to its supercession. Two main concerns can be identified in this literature. The first aims to show how the subordination of women, variously described as oppression, subjugation or exploitation, is, although often seen as ‘extra-economic’, in fact founded on a material basis and is linked into the political economy of capitalist society. This approach has attempted to demonstrate housework’s economic contribution to maintaining the capitalist system by providing labour necessary for the reproduction of labour power. It has raised the question of to what extent the development of capitalism has itself created the present domestic system and has, in particular, created ‘housework’.² This perspective has often involved the attempt to apply to the sphere of housework concepts previously restricted to the analysis of the more general, conventional and public, features of the capitalist economy.

Women’s Work Study Group, “Loom, Broom and Womb: Producers, Maintainers and Reproducers”

“Loom, Broom and Womb: Producers, Maintainers and Reproducers”
Women’s Work Study Group
Radical America Volume 10, Number 2 [March-April 1976]

HISTORY: WOMEN’S WORK AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM
Women’s work and the development of American capitalism can
be examined in three historical phases: the pre-capitalist phase
prior to 1820; the phase of competitive capitalism between 1820
and 1890; and the monopoly capitalist phase from 1890 to the present.
In this section each period is briefly described in terms of the
organization of production and the implications of the organization
of production for the lives of women.

KTVU, “Students, Parents March Against Closure Of Oakland Childcare Centers” (Aug. 11, 2010)

“Students, Parents March Against Closure Of Oakland Childcare Centers”

KTVU [Aug. 11 2010]

OAKLAND, Calif. —  Families opposed to the closure of seven Oakland Unified School District childcare centers marched Wednesday to the Board of Education meeting to protest shuttering the state-funded centers, a spokeswoman for the families said.

Parent support group Oakland Parents Together and families of students from the childcare centers held a press conference before marching to the 5 p.m. board meeting.

Students will speak during the public comment period at the board meeting, said Laurice Brown, a parent of students at the Manzanita childcare center and an Oakland Parents Together spokeswoman.

Patricia Hill Collins, “Work, Family and Black Women’s Oppression”

“Work, Family and Black Women’s Oppression”
Patricia Hill Collins
Chapter 3, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, 2000. Second edition.

 

Honey, de white man is the de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find
out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but
we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and
tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t
tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so
fur as Ah can see. —Zora Neale Hurston, 1937

With these words Nanny, an elderly African-American woman in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, explains Black women’s “place” to her young, impressionable granddaughter. Nanny knows that being treated as “mules uh de world” lies at the heart of Black women’s oppression. Thus, one core theme in U.S. Black feminist thought consists of analyzing Black women’s work, especially Black women’s labor market victimization as “mules.” As dehumanized objects, mules are living machines and can be treated as part of the scenery. Fully human women are less easily exploited. As mill worker Corine Cannon observes, “Your work, and this goes for white people and black, is what you are . . . your work is your life” (Byerly 1986, 156). 

Toronto Star, “Census change devalues women’s unpaid work” (Aug. 6, 2010)

“Census change devalues women’s unpaid work”

Antonia Zerbisias Feature Writer [August 6, 2010]

It’s said that a woman’s work is never done.

As far as Stephen Harper’s government is concerned, it need never be measured either.

All but lost in the controversy over the Conservatives’ impending elimination of the mandatory long-form census is how, in the proposed $30 million dollar replacement — the voluntary National Household Survey — Question 33 from the long form has been cut.

Question 33 (let’s call it Q.33) is a three-part query that has been in place since Canada made commitments at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. The question gathered data on how much time people spent on unpaid work: domestic chores, child care and attending to the needs of elderly relatives and friends. It helped make Canada a world leader in “time-use” data.

The results have also been showing how women are faring, socially and economically.

For example, the results indicate that despite a higher volume and percentage of women in the workforce over the past 20 years, changes between men and women in respective unpaid workloads have merely been “marginal.”

Based on information gathered in the 2006 census, StatsCan reports that, on average, “Women spend about an hour a day more on basic housework chores than their male counterparts. In 2005, women aged 25 to 54 averaged 2.4 hours daily cooking, cleaning and doing other basic unpaid household chores, compared with 1.4 hours per day for men in this age range.”

Two-thirds of Canada’s unpaid work is being performed by women. No matter how the value of that is evaluated —anywhere between 30 to 45 per cent of Canada’s $1.5 trillion GDP. That’s a heck of a lot of productivity that is being completely discounted.

“Question 33 has made it possible to understand that productivity does not consist in producing dollars alone,” says Queen’s University law professor Kathleen Lahey, author of Removing Fiscal Barriers to Women’s Labour Force Participation. “Productivity also consists of producing the human beings who grow up, if they are healthy, to become functioning members of the workforce, who help drive innovation, develop technology, etc. And it includes the work that produces day-to-day life that sustains human growth and evolution.

“Why don’t we want to know about that part of our productivity anymore?’’

Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective Statement”

“The Combahee River Collective Statement”

Combahee River Collective [1977]

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.