Cut-Rate Welfare Jobs in Bush Plan

The Bush administration is moving to allow states to place welfare recipients in jobs that pay less than the minimum wage--a reversal of federal policy that is sparking ire among public employee unions and advocates for the poor.

The White House idea is that such cut-rate jobs could provide work experience for many thousands of welfare recipients who have not moved into the labor force. Such work could take the form of community service, including tasks like cleaning up at parks and helping out in offices.

The Bush administration has concluded that this “supervised work experience” does not amount to a real-world job and should not be governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets the national minimum wage at $5.15 an hour, officials said this week. Some states, including California, have higher minimums.

“It’s intended to give them some work experience and give them an understanding of work,” said Andrew Bush, a welfare official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “That is not something that should be subject to minimum wage laws.”

The proposal is part of the administration’s push to impose much stricter work rules on welfare recipients, as Congress reexamines the sweeping welfare overhaul of 1996. The law expires later this year, and political leaders are starting to debate how to change it, with initial disputes emerging on the work rules that states would be required to follow.

“You need to have a program that’s very well-focused, and you need to have your clients very focused--and that focus needs to be on employment,” said Bush, who heads the Office of Family Assistance.

The welfare rolls, which peaked at 5 million families in 1994, have dropped by more than 50%.

Today, 1 in 3 welfare recipients holds a job. The Bush administration wants to increase that figure significantly, to 7 in 10. But welfare recipients who seek to enter the work force face a weaker economy than in the booming mid- and late-1990s. In addition, many of the most readily employable welfare recipients found jobs during those robust years, in many cases leaving behind those with fewer job skills.

One way states could achieve the big gains sought by the White House would be to expand community service jobs for welfare recipients, creating opportunities for some of the hardest to place.

“What you’re really trying to do is inculcate regular work habits and expectations,” said Jason Turner, who formerly ran New York City’s job program for welfare recipients.

Government has been in the business of creating jobs for many years, notably in efforts to help unemployed victims of the Great Depression in the 1930s. But the federal strategy of designing work experience in return for welfare checks is more recent, gaining attention in the 1990s when political leaders agreed to make the goal of work the centerpiece of welfare.

While the Bush administration would leave states various options to meeting its work requirements, it is placing a new emphasis on government-designed work experience.

But whether such jobs should pay less than minimum wage, as the Bush administration would allow, is stirring a debate over fair treatment of society’s least able workers. Already, the White House proposal is starting a backlash among those who claim that sub-minimum-wage welfare jobs inevitably displace real jobs held by low-income workers. More broadly, critics argue, sub-minimum-wage jobs threaten to pull down wage levels and working conditions for other workers who toil at the bottom rungs of the wage ladder.

“Our view is that if someone is doing work, and they’re a worker, they ought to be treated like any other worker,” said Nanine Meiklejohn, a lobbyist for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Washington. She added that placing welfare recipients in jobs “shouldn’t be used as an excuse to pay people sub-minimum wages.”

“We will certainly fight it,” she said of the Bush administration plan.

The Bush administration would require that most welfare recipients work for at least 24 hours a week. It also would tighten the definition of allowable work for those hours. For example, welfare recipients would no longer be able to count time spent in vocational education and job searches as substitutes for the 24-hour work requirement.

Given the tougher hurdles, some experts say states that spend less money for their welfare programs could face significant new pressures to create jobs for welfare recipients, particularly if the economy remains weak.

“Many states will have to consider creating or expanding [community service programs] to meet the new requirements,” said Sheri Steisel, director of human services policy at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In the past, scattered programs, including those in Wisconsin and New York City, emerged to provide public work activities for welfare recipients. In 1997 and again in 1999, the Clinton administration made clear that most such jobs--frequently referred to as “workfare”--were generally covered by federal laws on the minimum wage. Under the Clinton policy, which remains in effect, a person’s welfare and food stamp benefits could be counted as the compensation. The Bush administration plans to use welfare reform legislation as the way to enact its minimum wage provision.

Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who has introduced a major Democratic proposal on welfare reform, questioned in an interview whether the White House emphasis on publicly created work experience would ultimately benefit those who do it. As for sub-minimum wages, he said: “It’s just not right. It’s not fair to people involved that they should not have these protections.”

California and other states are only just learning details of the Bush welfare plan, and few were prepared to give substantive reaction Tuesday. But Andrew Roth, a spokesman for the California Department of Social Services, said the state “would pay at least the prevailing minimum wage” of $6.75 an hour for such work.

In fact, relatively few states have established large public work programs for their welfare recipients, in part because the private economy generated so many jobs during the 1990s. Also, less-affluent states that tend to spend less on welfare programs would face difficulty in setting up large-scale work programs if they are required to pay minimum wages, some pointed out.

Community service jobs would be just one way that states could satisfy the stiffer work requirements proposed by the Bush administration. Private-sector jobs, publicly subsidized jobs and on-the-job training could meet the standards. According to one administration document, the minimum-wage provision applies to “supervised work experience” and “supervised community service.”

At the same time, administration officials maintain that there are many ways a welfare recipient can enter the work force, with traditional private-sector jobs remaining a real possibility even in a weaker economy.

In a recent meeting with reporters, HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson maintained that the economy continues to generate many low-wage opportunities for welfare recipients, such as in health care. “I think there’s plenty of opportunities like that in every state in America.”