labor-welfare linkages and the imperative of organizing low-wage women workers

18 WorkingWorkingWorkingWorkingWorkingUSAUSAUSAUSAUSA—Winter 2002–3

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WorkingUSA, vol. 6, no. 3, Winter 2002–3, pp. 18–34.© 2003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.

ISSN 1089–7011 / 2003 $9.50 + 0.00.

LOUISE SIMMONS is an associate professor in the University of Connecticut’s School of SocialWork.

Labor-Welfare Linkages andthe Imperative of OrganizingLow-Wage Women WorkersLouise Simmons

Many recipients of Temporary Assistance to NeedyFamilies transitioning into the workforce face depressingprospects of low-wage work, limited opportunities foreconomic advancement, and huge struggles in balancingdemands of work and family. Welfare policy must beoverhauled to address these problems, not merely toachieve reductions in caseloads. As welfare recipients aretransformed into low-wage workers, unionization can bea potent method of raising incomes. Other labormovement endeavors such as living-wage campaigns andpolicy advocacy are also necessary to address the needs ofthese as yet unorganized workers.

FOR MANY LOW-INCOME WOMEN, THE LAST DECADE has been a night-mare. Welfare reform in 1996 heralded a new punitive era char-acterized by the dreadful realities of low-wage work, a shredded

safety net, and conflicting social policies—all of which look to con-tinue into the foreseeable future. Many middle-class women strugglewith the balance between work and family and are supportive of poli-

Labor-Welfare Linkages

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cies that address these tensions. They may even be encouraged to taketime off from work when they have children. Yet poor women aremandated into the workforce and now are being asked to work longerhours in order to comply with requirements for meager public assis-tance. As popular columnist Ellen Goodman (2002) observed: “Wevalue mothering when the family has a paycheck-earning father. Wedevalue it as rapidly as a dot-com stock when she is single and poor.”

In the legislative struggle over reauthorization of Temporary Assis-tance to Needy Families (TANF), it has been difficult to get manypolicymakers in Washington to hear the abundant voices of thosewho had endured hardships under TANF or to heed the many reportsthat offer criticism of TANF and the impact of welfare reform. Theyinstead seem content to showcase a number of so-called welfare suc-cess stories as justification for forging ahead with yet another cycleof policies that will keep welfare rolls low, but not end poverty. Thus,as former welfare recipients increasingly join the ranks of low-wageworkers, there are any number of implications for the labor move-ment—both opportunities and challenges—in terms of organizing,policy advocacy, and the larger social mission of labor.

Scaling Back the Social Welfare State—Class, Race, and Gender

Frances Fox Piven has argued eloquently and prolifically that in thisera of dramatic changes to welfare policy, welfare programs have beenattacked as part and parcel of an aggressive politics of class on thepart of business interests intent on reducing social welfare programsin order to discipline labor and “shore up” profits (see, for example,Piven 2002, 1998, 1997; Piven and Sampson 2001). Although scalingback the social welfare state is often posed as an answer to globalcompetition, she argues that this option is not an inevitable or ines-capable choice. Rather, this option is based on the triumph of thepolitics of greed and weak popular opposition in the United States.This weakness involves fragmented party structures, a struggling la-bor movement, an acceptance of neoliberal ideology, and “a popular


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culture deeply infused with racism and with sexual obsessions, as thedebate over welfare showed once again” (2001, 28).

Many have observed the gender bias inherent in welfare policy (seeAbramovitz 1996, 2002; Gordon 1994, 2002). Others have documentedthe distinctly racialized aspects of welfare reform: Support for policychanges came from some quarters on the basis of racial stereotypesand popular misconceptions about the behavior of poor women ofcolor, mainly African Americans. Moreover, welfare reform has ren-dered some particularly severe impacts on recipients of color: Thereis evidence that women of color get different treatment and suffermore sanctions, family-cap restrictions, and other forms of discrimi-nation in welfare programs (Neubeck and Cazenave 2001; Neubeck2002). Immigrants, including many who are people of color, havealso suffered inordinately under TANF. While the point in this articleis to focus on aspects of welfare most relevant to the labor move-ment, the gender and racial issues surrounding welfare policy arealso ripe for scrutiny, given how much attention and resources havebeen devoted to the behavior of poor women, as embodied in themarriage-promotion programs to be paid for with public funds. Thevery forces that want less government intervention in the market areeager to insert themselves into the personal decisions of poor women,as their lives now seem to be deemed affairs of state.

The Contours of the New Welfare Regime

The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program that was estab-lished in 1996 and replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children(AFDC) has produced a wide mixture of results. Since one feature isthat each state and U.S. territory has broad discretion to design itsown version of TANF, results vary from state to state and even withinregions of states, depending upon specific local features. Some statesemploy extensive sanction systems that reduce benefits as punish-ment for noncompliance. While federal lifetime limits of sixty monthsof assistance were established within the legislation, many states haveshorter time limits. States meet federal work requirements in a vari-



ety of ways: Some provide options for education and training, whileother states severely limit these options and embrace a “work first”approach. Some states have established “community service” jobs,that is, workfare, while others do not rely as extensively on thesealternatives. Few states are providing adequate supportive servicessuch as child-care or transportation subsidies. Federal funds that aresupposed to be directed to TANF programs sometimes are used bystate governments to fund other services, especially in times of bud-get crises. States also may privatize certain welfare functions, thuslaying off public workers and also injecting the profit motive intothe provision of services to some of the nation’s neediest citizens.Under these arrangements, recipients may not be counseled aboutprograms for which they are eligible. Given all of these factors, get-ting a handle on the impact of welfare reform is complex and chal-lenging, and an entire industry has blossomed to evaluate welfarereform and assess its impact in state after state.

Research on how “welfare leavers” are faring has not given manywelfare-rights activists cause for optimism. The huge reduction inwelfare rolls during the late 1990s has not necessarily correlated witha reduction in poverty of the former recipients. Results vary widely,and so-called success stories—depictions of recipients who have foundjobs and become “self-sufficient”—often correlate with the educationand skill levels of the recipients. But even more importantly, the defi-nition of the success itself must be scrutinized. Sanford Schram andJose Soss (2002; see also Schram 1995) argue convincingly that themanner in which the “problem” of welfare has been defined—theissue framing, the symbolism attached to the issue, the academicresearch, and the policy prescriptions—has led to a very limited scopewithin which to both envision policy options for and evaluate theoutcomes of welfare reform. Welfare reform policy has been framedaround the goals of decreasing the use of public assistance and chang-ing the behavior of the poor. Hence, caseload reduction and employ-ment among welfare “leavers” have become the criteria for success.They note, “Compared to improving material conditions in poor com-munities, it is relatively easy to pare the welfare rolls and push the


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poor into low-wage work” (2002, 65). Reducing poverty or inequal-ity, creating jobs for the poor, raising low wages to lift low-wage work-ers out of poverty, reducing social marginality, providing assistanceequitably across race and gender—these issues have not been framedas the policy goals around which to evaluate the success of welfarereform. Nor has attention been paid to waste, private-sector profiteer-ing, problems of program administration, or the dilemma of clientsnot gaining access to programs and entitlements for which they areeligible (Schram and Soss 2002).

Even within assessments of TANF that do concentrate on caseloadreduction and employment of welfare recipients, a number of re-spected researchers highlight the issues for those who are least ableto make this transition. For example, Pamela Loprest, writing forthe Urban Institute, has analyzed outcomes of families in a nationalsample who were involved with the welfare system. She states:

Many former recipients who have gone to work are having difficultymaking ends meet, faced with low wages and few benefits. Othersreturned to the welfare rolls quickly after losing a job or havingchild care arrangements fall through. Still other recipients have notyet joined the workforce because of multiple serious barriers thatimpede the transition. Some of these recipients continue to rely onwelfare, and face time limits on benefits. Finally, some former wel-fare recipients no longer collect benefits because they failed to com-ply with program rules, but have few alternative sources of income.(2002, 17)

Robert Moffitt of the Brookings Institution echoes her concerns.He notes that employment rates among single mothers have increaseddramatically, due in part to the strong economy of the late 1990s.However, he cautions that incomes of women leaving welfare areonly slightly higher than when they received assistance and that“there is a significant group of very disadvantaged women, manyno longer on welfare, who have major difficulties with employmentbecause of poor job skills, poor physical and mental health, andother problems. Special policies also need to be directed towardthis group” (2002, 1).



Transitioning to the Low-Wage Workforce

A myriad of issues confront welfare recipients in the transition to work.The issue of low wages is certainly paramount. Randy Albelda summa-rizes a common finding among the numerous impact studies:

What is astonishing about the results from these “leaver” studies ishow similar they are, despite the supposed diversity of programsadopted by the states. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of adultsare employed most often for about 35 hours a week, earning an aver-age hourly wage of about $7.50 in jobs that as often as not do not havehealth care benefits, rarely provide any sick days, and offer little or novacation time. (2002, 79)

Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute have issued several re-ports that examine the nature of the hardship these women face in theworkforce. Heather Boushey (2001) warns that the recession of 2001has severe impacts in those employment sectors in which welfare re-cipients have been finding jobs such as retail trade, eating and drink-ing establishments, the hospitality industry, and other mainlyservice-sector jobs. Boushey and Bethney Gunderson (2001) also docu-ment the problems that recent welfare recipients face, and, not surpris-ingly, these include food insecurity, housing problems, health-careissues, and inadequate child care. Boushey (2002a) additionally showsthat even those with full-time employment experience these hardships.

In this context, hundreds of thousands of single mothers are en-tering the workforce to face low wages, little opportunity for ad-vancement, and most certainly increased family stress under currentwelfare policies. Several research projects suggest that these singlemothers transitioning from welfare, the very women who most des-perately need flexible employment arrangements in order to accom-modate family demands and stay employed, are not likely to havejobs that offer the necessary flexible options in order to balancework and family. For example, Harvard researchers S. Jody Heymannand Alison Earle found that mothers leaving welfare for work haveless paid leave, that is, vacation and sick time, and other kinds offlexibility in their jobs than do mothers who had never been on


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AFDC. They tend to have jobs that lack benefits and are at greaterrisk of losing their jobs if they take time off to tend to the healthneeds of their children. They face awful choices in dealing withtheir children’s illnesses: “They can send sick children to school,leave them home alone, leave them in the care of other children, ortake unpaid leave. For parents earning close to the minimum wage,as is the case with many families exiting welfare for work, takingunpaid leave can drop the family income below the poverty level”(1999, 504).

The problems confronting low-income working families are de-scribed by Lisa Dodson et al. as the “entrenched mismatch betweenthe imperatives of raising families and keeping jobs in low-incomeAmerica” (2002, 1), producing intractable conflicts between thesafety, survival, and education of children and parents’ ability tomaintain employment. Many parents experience job loss, discipline,denied wages, and other problems as they require time off to meetfamily needs. Both this study and Heymann and Earle’s (1999) workcite the enormous problem of parents in low-income families beingunable to devote adequate time and attention to children, especiallywhen the children have learning disabilities or chronic health needs.

Flexibility in employment schedules is clearly beneficial to low-wage women workers, yet according to Elaine McCrate (2002), thereare gender and racial dimensions to work-schedule flexibility. Singlemothers have particularly rigid schedules, and African-American work-

Several research projects suggest that these single motherstransitioning from welfare, the very women who mostdesperately need flexible employment arrangements in orderto accommodate family demands and stay employed, are notlikely to have jobs that offer the necessary flexible options inorder to balance work and family.



ers are much less likely than white workers to exercise discretion overscheduling. Individuals in supervisory positions or policy-makingauthority and those in higher-paying jobs enjoy greater flexibilitythan other workers. McCrate advocates family-supportive public policysuch as legislating a minimum number of sick and personal days andvacation time so that workers can utilize this time to meet familyneeds. She further suggests that vigorously enforced affirmative ac-tion and unionization can assist women and black workers in gain-ing more flexible jobs to help families.

Boushey points out that welfare recipients who leave welfare andmaintain employment have the best chance of real wage growth overtime. The chances of keeping a job increase significantly with severalfactors: available, consistent, formal (center-based), and affordable andsubsidized child-care arrangements; job quality, including employer-provided health insurance; and higher starting wages. In her research,those women who had these advantages were significantly more likelyto be employed after two years than those without. For example:

• Former welfare recipients with young children who used formaldaycare are nearly three times as likely to be employed after twoyears as those who do not;

• Former welfare recipients who receive employer-provided healthinsurance are 2.6 times as likely to still be employed after threeyears as those who do not;

• Former welfare recipients who started their jobs earning in thesecond to bottom quintile are 63 percent more likely to still beemployed after two years as those who started in the bottomquintile. (2002b, 2)

Boushey suggests that, rather than adopting Work First approachesto job placement for welfare recipients, better-quality jobs should bepromoted, and employers should be helped in offering health insur-ance. Moreover, policies need to be adopted that improve starting wagesthrough such measures as “raising the minimum wage and fosteringthe development of unions in low-wage sectors of the economy” (p. 3).


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The Benefits of Organizing

It is thus becoming apparent to former welfare recipients and manyadvocates that high on the list of strategies to challenge this bleakpicture and create any sense of hope is unionization. Although a vastrange of policies and action must be undertaken to truly provideindividuals in the welfare system with options to better their lives,successfully organizing into a union or being hired at a unionizedwork site offers greater likelihood for higher wages and more controlor dignity on the job. Consider the Bureau of Labor Statistics num-bers cited in Sklar et al. that compare median weekly pay for full-time workers by union affiliation in 2000:

• union members’ (all races, both genders) median earnings were$696 compared to $542 for non-union workers;

• unionized women workers’ median earnings were $616 comparedto $472 for non-union women workers;

• for African Americans, median weekly earnings for those whowere union members were $596 compared to $436 to non-unionmembers; for African American women, the respective medianearnings were $564 compared to $408; for African American men,$619 compared to $479;

• for Hispanics, median weekly earnings for those who were unionmembers were $584 compared to $377 for non-union members;for Hispanic women, the respective median earnings were $489compared to $346; for Hispanic men, $631 compared to $394.(Sklar et al. 2001, 151)

The yearly impact of these patterns means thousands of dollarsmore in income for union members. Similar patterns hold for 2001(Bureau of Labor Statistics 2002).

Industries in which welfare recipients find work may or may not behighly unionized. However, one industry in which women leavingwelfare may be finding employment, the retail food industry, was re-cently analyzed by researchers at the Institute for Women’s Policy Re-



search (IWPR). The study was sponsored by the United Food and Com-mercial Workers International Union and utilized Current PopulationSurvey data to examine how unionization benefits retail food industryworkers. Vicky Lovell et al. found that “workers in the retail food in-dustry who are union members have significantly higher wages, higherrates of health insurance coverage, larger employment-based contribu-tions to health insurance premiums, and higher rates of union pen-sion coverage than nonunionized workers. Full-time and part-timeworkers, women and single mothers in the retail food industry all ben-efit from union membership” (2002, vi). The “union wage premium”for the entire industry was 31 percent, while for part-timers it was 33percent, and for cashiers, a job category held in large numbers bywomen, it was a mammoth 52 percent. While these outcomes are notsurprising to those associated with the labor movement, the welfarerights community has not often emphasized the benefits of unioniza-tion in its policy advocacy. Reports such as this one conducted by IWPRneed to be given attention in the welfare-rights arena.

However, with such a small percentage of the total full-time U.S.workforce actually in unions—under 14 percent—and an even smallerpercentage of less than 7 percent of part-time workers (as are largenumbers of former welfare recipients) in unions (Bureau of LaborStatistics 2002), the benefits of unionization are often elusive forformer welfare recipients. They are blending into the low-wage unor-ganized workforce and desperately need to be organized.

The Labor-Welfare Nexus

The imperative of reaching and organizing these workers fits withinthe discussion of how to strengthen and build the labor movement.Many ideas are circulating about this most urgent of all challengesfor labor. For example, Richard Freeman and Joel Rogers (2002) advo-cate what they refer to as “open source unionism” as a strategy tobuild the labor movement. This approach envisions extending a newform of union membership to workers beyond those work sites inwhich unions have demonstrated majority support and where collec-


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tive bargaining agreements have been negotiated. Making use of theInternet, this form of unionism would encompass a new range ofactivities in which workers with workplace problems could gain as-sistance or be provided information and referrals. Other methodscould be developed to extend unionism to workers who currently donot have a mechanism to share its benefits. More interaction withcommunity forces could be part of this model, especially aroundpolitical action, as membership is redefined. Open-source unionism

is meant to complement existing forms of union membership withinthe U.S. system of labor relations.

Clearly if there was ever a group of workers who could benefit fromsuch new forms of union membership, it is the low-wage unorganized—or not-yet-organized—workforce, which includes many former welfarerecipients. Open-source unionism could help address the myriad prob-lems they encounter as they enter the workforce, particularly their rightson the job, supportive services, unemployment issues, and more.

When welfare reform had just been enacted, Bill Fletcher imploredthe labor movement to embrace welfare recipients as members of theworking class, part of labor’s constituency beyond those already inunions: “This means a fight for workers’ rights and economic justice,not solely a fight for an improved collective-bargaining agreement”(1997, 129). Foreshadowing some of the Freeman-Rogers argument,his comments continue to be apropos as he observed that new formsof organization would be necessary if labor is to “become theoverarching voice for that larger community of workers who are seek-ing economic and social justice” (p. 130), including councils of un-employed and underemployed, labor-led economic developmentprojects, cooperatives, and other associations.

The creation of workfare programs, the privatization of welfareservices, the expansion of the low-wage workforce, and theshredding of a safety net serve to harm all workers.



Much is at stake for labor as welfare policy continues to evolve inthe TANF reauthorization process and beyond. We have observed else-where (Simmons 2002) that instituting TANF as a time-limited pro-gram, with broad discretion by states, has done general harm to theentire scope of the welfare state. The creation of workfare programs,the privatization of welfare services, the expansion of the low-wageworkforce, and the shredding of a safety net serve to harm all work-ers, not simply those who spend some portion of their lives on public

Certainly living-wage campaigns and raising the minimumwage are important parts of the picture.

assistance. But there are ways to address these issues, and there areexamples of labor’s meaningful involvement in the struggle overwelfare programs and the plight of low-wage workers that can be rep-licated and adapted to local conditions and local communities.

From labor’s standpoint, community unionism (see Fine 2001) asembodied in projects such as the Los Angeles Alliance for a NewEconomy (LAANE), Working Partnerships in San Jose, BaltimoreansUnited in Leadership Development (BUILD) in Baltimore, and othersare vehicles that help frame and develop organizing in innovativeways. In our home state of Connecticut, a recently established orga-nizing and policy advocacy group, the Connecticut Center for a NewEconomy (CCNE), which takes LAANE as its inspiration, is also at-tempting to address the problems of low-wage workers in Connecti-cut. Through a combination of labor and community organizing,advocacy and research, CCNE advances an agenda that suggests (atleast) three options to raise income for these workers: raising andenforcing minimum- or living-wage standards; investing in trainingand education; and nurturing collective bargaining (CCNE 2001).Through support of union-organizing drives and progressive publicpolicy, CCNE is attempting to build a movement that addresses theissues of low-wage work and attempts to transform these jobs intofamily-sustaining employment.


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Certainly living-wage campaigns and raising the minimum wageare important parts of the picture. Living-wage coalitions have beenable to get local ordinances passed in more than eighty cities, andcounting (Reynolds and Kern 2002). Moreover, the sophisticated toolof self-sufficiency standards (Pearce 2002) that actually measures thecost of living for different family types in different locations givesadded force to the claims of these movements and can be used toverify the need for higher wages. These efforts underscore the need

for public policy to address low-wage work and can involve alliancesof community, labor, and welfare-rights activists. Moreover, the en-tire arena of economic development policy is being reframed in or-der to elevate issues of living wages and demand that if tax incentivesare offered to corporations, they make good on promises to producedecent wage jobs. An exciting conference in July 2002, “ReclaimingEconomic Development” sponsored by Good Jobs First, brought to-gether several hundred activists from around the country to constructa progressive economic development agenda that addresses povertyand creates opportunity. The needs of former welfare recipients inthe low-wage workforce certainly fit within this agenda.

In various communities, labor has been undertaking projects thatbenefit welfare recipients in terms of training and services. BrianTurner (2001) elaborates examples of how unions are reaching out tolow-wage workers, including former welfare recipients, to provideaccess to job-training programs that place participants into unionjobs. His impressive list includes the Milwaukee Jobs Initiative, HotelEmployees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) training programs, achild-care worker training program of 1199C–AFSCME (American Fed-

In some places, there are promising alliances developingbetween those in the welfare rights world and the labormovement to help meet immediate needs of former recipients,now largely low-wage workers.



eration of State, County & Municipal Employees) in Philadelphia,training and placement programs in health care by 1199 in New York(part of Service Employees International Union [SEIU]), and also sev-eral examples of training programs run by the Building Trades in vari-ous locales. At the Reclaiming Economic Development conference inJuly 2002, speakers included representatives from the Alameda Corri-dor Jobs Coalition, a project in the Los Angeles area that has organizedand obtained training and living-wage jobs for hundreds of individualsfrom communities along the Alameda Corridor, including 190 formerwelfare recipients, and also from the New York City organization TradeUnions and Residents for Apprenticeship Development and EconomicSuccess (TRADES), an organization formed by the Laborers Union thatis working with public-housing residents who are mandated to docommunity service in their housing developments. So in some places,there are promising alliances developing between those in the wel-fare rights world and the labor movement to help meet immediateneeds of former recipients, now largely low-wage workers.

Public-policy advocacy is another arena for collaboration. Spacelimitations do not permit a full discussion of this aspect of the labor-welfare linkage, but, briefly, on the national level through the workof unions such as AFSCME and SEIU and the AFL-CIO, and in manystate and local struggles over welfare, labor has been and can be es-sential partners in the many battles. Coalitions such as Working Mas-sachusetts serve as examples of statewide collaborations in which,through the process of crafting a joint agenda, welfare rights activistsand union representatives reached deeper levels of understanding anddefined new ways to work together.

Targeting low-wage women workers for organizing and new formsof union membership are important ways for labor to help solve thegrave problems these women face and simultaneously increase theranks of unions. Women workers are ready to be organized, as dem-onstrated repeatedly in recent years. The 75,000 home-care workerswho voted to join SEIU in 1999—the largest organizing victory indecades—or the janitors’, hotel workers’, and textile workers’ recentorganizing victories (Turner 2001) demonstrate clearly that women


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workers are ready to organize, even against great odds. The leader-ship positions that women, particularly women of color, are assum-ing in the labor movement, with the emergence of leaders such asMaria Elena Durazo and Goeconda Arguello-Kline within HERE(Snedeker 2002), are also a testament to women’s willingness to actand their capacity for leadership.

Joining unions will not eliminate all of the anguish that womenleaving welfare and entering the low-wage workforce endure in termsof housing, medical problems, finding sufficient time to care for chil-dren, and the multitude of stresses that low-income life engenders.However, it can be a critical element in beginning to lift incomes andassert rights on the job.

Deepak Bhargava, director of the National Campaign for Jobs andIncome Support, a coalition of more than 200 organizations that hasbeen organizing on TANF reauthorization and related issues, assertsthat the allies of grassroots antipoverty organizations—the religiouscommunity and labor, civil rights, women’s rights, student, and othergroups—are essential for any successful outcomes in struggles overpoverty issues. How these allies converge with grassroots organiza-tions led by low-income people is an open question and cannot be“scripted,” but he postulates that we could be entering “a turningpoint when crucial new ideas, frames, organizing approaches and al-liances were created” (2002, 208).

Perhaps one of the most important organizing approaches of all isone that is not so new, but ready to be tried by a new group of work-ers—the type of organizing that oppressed and exploited workers haveturned to throughout modern history—organizing into unions. In sodoing, low-wage women workers, some of whom have been on publicassistance and some of whom have not, can begin to reclaim thepower, dignity, and respect that they so profoundly deserve.

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labor-welfare linkages and the imperative of organizing low-wage women workers

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