Dr. Manning Marable, Call & Post
The American working class today is divided largely into two groups: one upper tier which receives salaries that can support families and a middle class standard-of-living; and a second tier which can be described as the "working poor." These are full time workers or people actively seeking work who nevertheless are trapped near poverty. It is this group, more than almost any other, that is most seriously threatened by last year's reactionary welfare legislation. It is this group of struggling, working families that is targeted for virtual destruction by the Republicans' "Contract With America."The working poor remain largely hidden in this country, obscured from the light of honest analysis by racist stereotypes about poverty and work. In truth, the majority of American workers who earn more than the minimum wage, but less than $30,000 a year, are neither black nor Latino, but white. Most poor children live in working families - in fact, less than one third five in families depending solely on public aid.
We are often told that "workfare" is a constructive means through which people who are on public assistance can be trained to be competitive for jobs. But how has this program actually worked? In New York City, in the first 18 months of the workfare program, 166,000 people were pushed off welfare rolls. About one half were deemed not eligible to participate in the workfare program, which is formally called the Work Experience Program, or WEP. Of that number, according to the New York Times, only 11,700 were reported to find real jobs after participating in WEP. And of that number, barely two or three hundred actually received any kind ofjob-specific training or skills. In short, WEP was not only designed to fail: it is being used to destroy the lives ofmore than one hundred thousand women and children, in New York City alone, and the lives of several million families across America.
This "war on the poor" has also been launched to foster a fierce struggle between welfare recipients and low-wage workers, in the desperate search for jobs. William F. Henning, Jr., a vice president of the Communication Workers of America Local 1180 in New York City, states that "this is going to create intense competition for jobs that don't exist, especially at the low-wage level. What this is is an impetus toward a SUBMINIMUM wage." These government programs as currently designed are clearly inadequate to address the needs of the working poor. What will happen when the new five-year limit for welfare eligibility takes effect, when millions of unprepared and untrained poor people are forced in the labor force?
Perhaps the larger question to be answered is why there is a crisis of jobs for low income working people? Part of the fault lies in the deliberately destructive policies of the corporations, which in recent years have destroyed or exported millions of higher-paying jobs in steel, auto, tire and chemical industries. The new jobs created in the 1980s and 1990s often had limited fringe benefits and poor health care coverage. One 1996 study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Boston notes that the overall percentage of blacks covered by private pension plans has fallen from 45 percent in 1979 to only 34 percent in 1993. At the same time pension coverage for Latinos has dropped from 38 percent to 25 percent currently have private pension coverage. At a time when Social Security benefits seem uncertain, millions of older low income Americans may soon face economic disaster.
The only long-term solution to the crisis of the working, poor is to fight for a comprehensive agenda for jobs and justice. Politically, we must support massive public works legislation, where millions of working people could be hired to provide services and to rebuild our cities. We should be training people to provide child care for working parents, healthcare, supportive services for seniors, improving our schools and making our communities safer and drug-free. We should outlaw workfare and replace it with real jobs at living wages. We need to cut corporate welfare and tax abatements, replacing them, with policies that provide capital and assistance to smaller businesses and community-based non-profits and worker self-managed companies.
As long as trade unionists, the working poor, and people on public assistance are forced to compete against each other, nothing will ever change. We must redefine the rules of the game. We must assert every person's right to a job or guaranteed minimum income for those who cannot work. The solution to the crisis of the working poor is the pursuit of the fight for jobs and justice. Dr. Manning Marable is Professor of History and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University, New York City. "Along the Color Line" appears in over 300 publications throughout the U.S. and internationally.
Return to Drum Home | Return to Rites of Passage Home