County Welfare Recipients Seeking to Form Union

Required to toil at mostly menial jobs in return for their monthly $212 checks, general relief recipients in Los Angeles County are learning the ways of the work world in more ways than one. They are complaining about job conditions and attempting to start a union.

“General relief recipients are being put in the position of workers, but they are denied the rights of workers,” said Amy Schur, an organizer with the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a national advocacy group for poor people that is part of a wider effort to create the state’s first union for welfare recipients required to work.

Schur said that so far more than 500 general relief workers in the county have signed a petition authorizing ACORN to represent them as their union.

On Friday, about 30 of them who work at County-USC Medical Center marched into administrative offices and shouted, “We want respect! We want respect!”

They complained that unlike permanent employees at the hospital, they are not given uniforms to wear while cleaning or doing grounds maintenance work, aren’t trained for their jobs and don’t receive a cafeteria discount.

Several protesters also complained that they were not given proper safety equipment such as goggles and smocks and that they had been passed over for permanent jobs as positions opened.

Carmen Scott, administrator of the medical center’s environmental services and supervisor of about 100 Workfare workers on any given day, said uniforms were on order and training programs are available for general relief workers who work inside the hospital.

She also said she would look into instituting some training for grounds workers and see if they could obtain discounts at the cafeteria.

ACORN is not the only group that thinks unions are a good idea for those required to work in return for public welfare benefits.

Bart Diener, spokesman for Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents county workers, said that without wage increases, the Workfare forces will undercut the pay of permanent employees.

“Our goal is first and foremost to see that these Workfare employees get organized--if ACORN does it, that’s fine,” he said.

The local organizing effort here is part of a national push, Schur said. In New York City, ACORN has a following of 5,000 Workfare workers. There are also plans to create workfare unions in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Milwaukee.

“Workfare workers are going to need protection,” said New York ACORN organizer John Kest. “Right now they have no protection, and they have absolutely no choice whether or not they want to work.”

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich had another suggestion for the general relief recipients: “They need to put their resources into finding permanent employment and not invest it in union dues each month to make their union wealthy,” he said.

While the idea of making welfare recipients work for their checks is newly popular with the federal and state governments, Los Angeles County has been doing it since 1948. If you receive a monthly $212 general relief check from the county and are able-bodied, the county expects you to spend five days a month working for government and nonprofit agencies.

The jobs are generally menial--cleaning beaches and restrooms, grounds-keeping and the like--but can also include clerical tasks.

Of the estimated 89,000 people who receive general relief in the county, about 61% are considered employable. Of those, about 26,000 are working every month. The rest are either exempt or don’t report as required, in which case they are suspended or dropped from the county welfare program and must reapply for benefits.