Organizing around Public Policy and Advocacy

Grassroots activity began in earnest in 1996 and 1997, focused primarily on federal and state legislative issues. Most of the TANF design issues at stake during that period - Who is eligible for assistance? What is the definition of work? What are the penalties for noncompliance? - have since been decided. Virtually all states' TANF plans have received federal approval, and only a few state legislatures anticipate further action on the basic design of their new programs.²⁵

The completion of this initial legislative phase has not diminished grassroots activity. On the contrary, organizing efforts have increased in scale and intensity, shifting primarily to the municipal level. For example, local programs that displace low-wage workers with TANF recipients, or impose stringent requirements on recipients and result in high rates of expulsion from the program, offered opportunities for community organizing in many cities. Statewide campaigns are underway to demand public job creation, expanded educational benefits, and other enhancements that cannot be won on the municipal level. 

Workfare as a Focus

These two campaigns confront similar issues arising from the conditions facing WEP workers. They include safety concerns, fair treatment at the worksite, and the right to organize. Many of these concerns stem from the New York workfare program's placement policy. A large percentage of WEP workers are placed in dead-end labor positions: cleaning up city parks, sweeping streets, and performing janitorial services. Some have been assigned to the Bellevue morgue. WWOC and WEP Workers Together have demanded protective gear for workers at hazardous sites; a grievance procedure that guarantees due process; and opportunities to advance into permanent jobs. 

These two campaigns use similar organizing techniques, including recruitment at workfare sites, petition drives, and occasional actions against city administrators. Moreover, WWOC has organized its own union of WEP workers through a citywide ballot of workfare sites. This WEP workers union is now demanding city recognition as a bargaining unit. 

Not all workfare organizing has been in response to existing workfare programs. Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development (BUILD), an Industrial Areas Foundation affiliate, has worked with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to block workfare programs in Baltimore before they were created. As a result of these efforts, BUILD and AFSCME have won a commitment from Maryland's governor to require no displacement of current workers and to use workfare only if employers can certify the creation of an additional job for each welfare recipient placed at their work site. This state policy applies not only to TANF-subsidized workfare, but also to related federal tax credits. Having won this victory, BUILD is now organizing a campaign to insure that welfare recipients in college are not forced to abandon their education in order to fulfill TANF work requirements. BUILD's community organizing techniques are similar to WEP organizing in New York, although the union partnership is stronger in Baltimore. 

The New York and Baltimore examples represent some of the more successful efforts to organize welfare recipients. They highlight important criteria for successful workfare organizing strategies: 

• Leadership for the effort should come from strong community organizations; 
• Workfare workers are more effectively organized into a separate membership entity, rather than absorbed as general members of a multi-issue organization; 
• Workfare organizing should build partnerships with unions adversely affected by welfare reform policies; 
• Most organizing efforts have begun with issues of immediate concern to workfare workers (protective gear like gloves and helmets, worksite policies), and then expanded to take on larger issues such as union recognition; and 
• Organizing should ultimately progress to the level of systemic reform, i.e., the establishment of grievance procedures or recognition of a union.