|
NATIONAL
JOBS FOR ALL COALITION
UNCOMMON SENSE 16
[REV.] October 2013
WE NEED A WPA FOR OUR TIME
with an appendix on workfare
by Nancy Rose, Professor Emerita of Economics,
California State University, San Bernardino, and Advisory Board,
National Jobs for All Coalition
Continuing high levels of unemployment call for a large-scale
government job creation program like the WPA* from the 1930s.
While President Obama made a start in this direction with the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, it was only a
fraction of what was needed. Yet even this small program
brought protests. Antigovernment sentiment in general accounts
for some of this reaction. In addition, conventional wisdom
often dismisses job creation programs as inefficient “make-work”
and a waste of taxpayer monies.
A clear-eyed evaluation of government job creation tells a different
story. Developed to provide work for people normally expected
to be employed, participants in these programs have been treated
with some respect, paid wages based on market rates, and provided
work in a variety of innovative and socially useful projects.
While these programs were not without problems, a careful look
at the record shows that the pluses far outweighed the minuses,
and that many negative assessments were based on grossly exaggerated
claims which are not supported by the evidence. Other problems
were virtually assured by constraints and contradictory goals
imposed on the programs. In order to argue effectively for new
work programs, it is helpful to understand both the contributions
and the limitations of the previous ones.
Public employment programs: part of our heritage
Although government job creation programs have at times been
considered “un-American,” nothing could be further
from the truth. They have a long history in the US and have been
enacted periodically, especially when rising unemployment has
caused protest. For example, during the Embargo of 1807, a mass
meeting of unemployed seamen led New York City to put them to
work on projects such as building the new city hall and cleaning
and repairing streets. Public works projects were set up by cities
during recessions and depressions from the early 1800s through
the first few years of the Great Depression of the 1930s. They
were primarily developed for white, male heads-of-households,
although some sewing projects were set up for women and for men
unable to work outdoors.
Job programs in the Great Depression
The largest and most innovative public employment programs were
established in the 1930s as part of the New Deal. During this
most severe depression in the 20th century, unemployment rose
to 25 percent in 1933 and was still nearly 15 percent in 1940.
While the WPA is the best known of the depression era programs,
it was preceded by the even more innovative and controversial
FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration) and CWA (Civil
Works Administration).
The FERA was the first of the New Deal relief programs.
(Welfare was called relief until the 1950s.) It was established
in May 1933 in response to the tremendous suffering and need,
as local relief agencies had been running out of funds.
The FERA was a relief program, as recipients had to prove
that they were sufficiently needy in order to receive aid.
Some cash and in kind relief, like food, were dispensed, but the
primary focus was getting people back to work. Projects
were set up quickly, and were often continuations of earlier worktests
(programs that required people to prove they were not “lazy”
and deserved aid), as the program rolls quickly grew to 1.7 million
people (of approximately 12 million unemployed).
While the programs of the New Deal’s first 100 days stemmed
the economic slide, the economy remained mired in depression.
By the fall 1934 as the first New Deal winter approached, unemployment
registered a disastrous 22 percent, and the administration believed
that something grand needed to be done in order to avert another
Depression winter of heightened despair and increased protest.
The answer was the CWA, the most expansive jobs program thus far
in U.S. history. While the FERA was a relief program, the
CWA was an employment program, as participants did not
have to be certified as eligible for relief. In a sense,
their status as unemployed was sufficient proof of their need.
The CWA was rapidly put into effect and by January 1934 there
were 4.3 million people on the rolls. Perhaps not surprisingly,
conservatives and employers of low-wage labor bitterly complained
that the CWA was too large, paid wages that were too high, and
was an inefficient waste of government resources. In response
the program was cut just two months after it began, as hours were
reduced and it was announced that the entire program would soon
be ended.
The CWA was phased out over the next two and a half months, and
the FERA was resumed (along with the Rural Rehabilitation Program
for people in rural areas and small towns). It lasted through
the spring 1935, when it was replaced by the WPA. WPA rolls
fluctuated widely, reaching a peak of 3.3 million people in November
1938, when the election of many conservatives brought the New
Deal to an end and government policies in general became more
restrictive. Then followed a steady decline in WPA rolls, and
there were only 42,000 people left when it closed on June 30,
1943, by which time mobilization for World War II had ended the
Depression and brought unemployment below 2 percent of the labor
force.
While these programs were frequently accused of being useless
“make-work,” the opposite is true. They literally
changed the face of America. Participants not only performed useful
work. Most of it would not otherwise have been done, and
the country would have been poorer as a result. Workers built
and repaired 1 million miles of roads and 200,000 public facilities,
including schools, playgrounds, courthouses, parks and athletic
fields, swimming pools, bridges, and airports, drained malarial
swamps, and exterminated rats in slums. They created works of
art, gave concerts, set up theaters throughout the country, even
in small towns, set up nursery schools, served over 1.2 billion
school lunches to needy children, gave immunizations, taught illiterate
adults to read and write, and wrote state guidebooks--classics
that are still in use. They sewed 383 million coats, overalls,
dresses and other garments, and, using surplus cotton collected
by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, made more than
a million mattresses that were given to destitute families, as
were the garments.
In addition to the FERA, CWA, and WPA, the Civil Conservation
Corps (CCC) and the National Youth Administration (NYA) were established
to provide work for young people. (Another type of New Deal program,
the Public Works Administration stimulated private employment
through publicly-financed construction projects.) The innovative
CCC targeted unemployed young men, whom the program housed in
camps located in every state. (At Eleanor Roosevelt’s insistence,
some camps were established for young women, but their presence
remained minuscule.) Most CCC workers were poorly educated, and
had never held a steady job. They were given food, clothing, shelter,
medical care, and, eventually, educational services. Most of their
wages, which were similar to those of Army privates, were sent
to their needy families. This was America’s first massive
conservation program. For example, CCC workers planted 2 billion
trees, including many on burned or eroded hillsides, stocked nearly
a billion fish, and built a network of fire-lookout towers, roads,
and trails. In addition to conserving many lives of that generation,
the CCC left future generations a legacy of land, water, and forestry
preservation.
The NYA gave part-time jobs to out-of-school young men and women
as well as high-school and college students. Students generally
did clerical jobs, but many worked in their fields of interest.
Some college students helped faculty with research, including
the late Lynn Turgeon, who was a member of the National Jobs for
All Coalition and who himself became a professor.
Public employment programs were terminated in the early 1940s
when World War II ended the Great Depression. Except for small
programs during the 1960s, jobs programs were not created again
until the 1970s. The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act
(CETA) was the major program of the decade. A Public Service Employment
(PSE) component provided a range of socially useful work. For
example, CETA workers developed community recreation and arts
programs, set up screening clinics in hospitals, and weatherized
low-income homes. They worked in law enforcement agencies, day
care and senior centers, battered women's shelters, and even in
some activist organizations. In fact, many non-profits remained
in existence or became more effective in part because of CETA
workers.
Public employment programs: problems and progress
Although past fair work programs have much to commend them, they
had two serious limitations. First, they never provided enough
jobs: they have never served all those eligible for them.
Even at the peak of the massive programs of the 1930s, WPA jobs
were provided for 4.4 million--only one-third--of the unemployed.
Yet this experience shows that, given the will, the government
was able to provide decent work for many millions while meeting
urgent social needs. This was at a time when both the labor force
and the government were far smaller and the country much poorer
than it is today. Second, the programs continued the
existing discrimination based on race and gender. This
was most blatant in the 1930s' programs: participants were disproportionately
white males, who were typically paid more than women and people
of color. But discrimination is not inherent to such programs.
The New Deal preceded the Civil Rights Act and women’s movement
by decades, and discrimination was still rampant and legal throughout
society. Most blacks still lived in the South, disenfranchised
and in near peonage, and southern Democrats wielded enormous power.
Some progress was made in the 1970s, as CETA improved pay and
occupational equity for women and people of color. By 1978 there
were special training programs for teenage mothers; for women
who had raised their families but had few marketable skills; and
for women to learn higher-wage, non-traditional trades usually
closed to them. Low-income trainees could take these courses because
they received stipends and were reimbursed for expenses. Then,
in 1981, even though unemployment was rising rapidly, the Reagan
Administration terminated PSE, already cut back sharply by the
Carter Administration, and Congress allowed the entire CETA program
to end the following year.
Public employment programs: constraints led
to criticisms
Federal job creation programs have always been subjected to unremitting
criticisms. Projects were seen as inefficient and unnecessary
"make-work;" participants replaced regular government
employees and program funds were substituted for state and local
moneys; wages were too high; and programs were rife with graft,
corruption, and mismanagement. There is little validity to many
of these criticisms, but some reflect contradictions imposed on
programs rather than inherent flaws.
Most problematic for the FERA, CWA, and WPA was the mandate to
create as many jobs as possible with their funds, but not replace
regular government workers or compete with the private sector.
This made economic and political sense to Congress, but left the
programs vulnerable to attack. To illustrate, construction projects,
especially road-building, employed large numbers of manual laborers.
Workers often used picks and shovels, not the grading and paving
machinery used by private firms. Thus, public work was less efficient
than private, that is, more labor was used. But that was
following the mandate to create the maximum amount of work possible—to
make work.
The restriction against replacing public workers also generally
made sense since ordinary government services should be provided
by people hired through normal labor market channels. Yet during
the 1930s many municipalities had such low tax revenues that necessary
services were cut. (Higher unemployment meant that there
was less income to tax). Rural schools were especially hard
hit as lack of funds led many towns to close them for all or part
of the year. Responding to this need, one FERA project reopened
rural schools, providing work for unemployed teachers and education
for children.
Not surprisingly, when clearly useful goods were produced in an
efficient manner, the projects came under scathing criticism and
were shut down. This was the fate of some innovative projects,
like the mattress-making project and the project to reopen factories.
None of the goods produced were sold through normal market channels.
They were given to relief recipients or used in public facilities
such as hospitals. Nevertheless, the projects were lambasted for
competing unfairly with the private sector. In fact, they provided
goods that otherwise would largely have been unavailable or unaffordable
for the users.
Critics regularly castigated the WPA as "leaf-raking."
(Such maintenance services were prohibited in 1934. However, leaf-raking,
like housework, is necessary but unappreciated: no one notices
whether leaves are raked, garbage is collected, or snow is shoveled--or
whether the dishes are washed, the floors are swept, and dinner
is prepared--unless these tasks are not done.) Mainly, critics
used “boondoggling,” “make-work,” and
“leaf-raking” to berate these programs. While some
“make-work” did exist, mainly due to restrictions
on what programs could do, these were the exception. Just a partial
list of the WPA accomplishments (above) shows the absurdity of
these charges.
The far smaller programs of the 1970s were even more constrained
than their 1930s' predecessors--but were also subjected to intense
criticism. While the 1930s' programs peaked at about 30% of the
unemployed, the maximum reached on CETA was only about 12%
of the unemployed, though in a much larger labor force.
More importantly, the scope of the programs was much narrower.
Construction and projects to produce goods for needy families
were gone. All that remained were services. Yet services, especially
those provided by government, are easy to target as "make-work."
The basic assumption is that if the services were useful, the
private sector would already be providing them. Further, many
now believe that the private sector is far more efficient than
the government since the latter is not subject to profitability
criteria. The magic of the bottom line is assumed to result in
the best possible organization of production—even though
there is little factual evidence to support this view.
CETA was also plagued by charges of "fiscal substitution,"
i.e. the substitution of federal funds for state and local funds
and of CETA workers for regular government employees. These charges
increased in intensity through the 1970s. However, the severe
recession of the mid-1970s, along with state initiatives to limit
taxes, caused a shortfall in state tax revenues, so that many
government services would not have been provided without CETA.
Since some of these services had previously been provided by government
agencies, it looked like substitution even though it was not.
Critics in both the 1930s and the 1970s also complained that
wages in work programs were set too high, thus attracting workers
from private sector employment. In fact, during the 1930s this
could happen only in exceptional circumstances since there were
never enough jobs for those who needed them. WPA workers who refused
reasonable private jobs could be discharged.
Finally, allegations of graft and corruption were often heard
in the 1930s and the 1970s. Although these criticisms are commonly
made of a range of government programs, the consequences are very
different depending on the program criticized. Wasteful
spending by the military or Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
involvement in illegal activities have led to little fundamental
change in either of these institutions. In contrast, attacks on
social programs for in effect providing economic options for the
poor frequently lead to their limitation or abandonment. More
to the point, there is scant evidence of widespread abuse or waste.
Indeed, some programs most derided by foes, like the WPA cultural
projects, are now highly regarded. They helped sustain the talents
of many artists, such as Ben Shahn, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson
Pollock, and writers like Richard Wright, Arthur Miller and Studs
Turkel.
Public job creation: needed along with training and
support services
To evaluate public employment programs, it is important to see
the constraints imposed on them and to respond to time-worn criticisms,
especially charges of inefficiency and "make--work."
Historically, government employment programs have been put in
a no-win position: programs that turn out goods and services not
produced by the private sector are criticized as inefficient or
make-work, while those that replicate goods produced by the private
sector are condemned as “socialist.”
We need to revive large-scale government job creation programs.
We can build on what we have learned from past programs--both
their strengths and their shortcomings--and adapt them to current
conditions. We can learn from the range and scope of the New Deal
programs, and from the education and training programs of the
1960s and 1970s. Work in the home raising children or caring for
the sick or infirm should be recognized as "real" and
socially necessary, worthy of social subsidy--but not only for
welfare recipients. We need child care, paid parental leave, children’s
allowances, and more elder care.1 Rather than the devolution of
federal programs to the states, we need federal job creation and
provision of welfare, education and training. Only the national
government can command the necessary resources, impose uniform,
minimum standards and design programs which avoid a competitive
race at the state and local level to shed financial responsibility.
There is much that needs to be done that a public employment
program can do, such as repairing our crumbling roads and bridges,
building a high-speed railroad system, developing recreation programs
for teens, and adding teachers’ aides to classrooms.
Funds for job programs can easily be found.2
The private sector won't create enough decent-paying JOBS FOR
ALL. Nor will it meet the nation’s human and infrastructure
needs. It’s up to us to pressure the government to do what
the private sector can’t or won’t do.
*WPA=Works Progress Administration
Notes:
1. See Uncommon Sense #17: Needed: A National Commitment to
Families.
2. Philip Harvey has calculated that job creation programs can
largely pay for themselves. See Uncommon Sense #14, “Paying
for Full Employment,” and his Learning
from the New Deal [Jobs Programs], p. 19]
Additional funds could be made available by reinstituting
more progressive income taxes, cutting corporate welfare benefits,
cutting excessive military expenditures, requiring those responsible
for the bank failures to pay (instead of taxpayers), and imposing
taxes on speculative flows of foreign currency or very short-term
holdings of stocks and bonds (which would also help stabilize
the economy).
Nancy E. Rose is author of Put to Work: The WPA and Public
Employment in the Great Depression (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1994; 2nd ed. 2009) and Workfare or Fair Work: Women,
Welfare, and Government Work Programs (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1995). Program data and statistics are
from these books.
Other sources: Nels Anderson, The Right to Work. New
York: Modern Age Books, 1938; Josephine Chapin Brown, Public
Relief 1929-1939. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1940;
reprint edition New York: Octagon Books, 1971; Helen Ginsburg,
Full Employment and Public Policy in the United States and
Sweden. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983; Donald S. Howard,
The WPA and Federal Relief Policy. New York: Russell
Sage Foundation: 1943, reprint New York: Da Capo Press, 1973;
William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the
New Deal 1932-1940. New York: Harper Colophon, 1963; Sar
Levitan and Frank Gallo, Spending to Save: Expanding Job Opportunities.
Washington, DC: George Washington Univ. Center For Social Policy,
1992; Arthur W. Macmahon, John D. Millett, and Gladys Ogden, The
Administration of Federal Work Relief. New York: Da
Capo Press, 1971; Bonnie Fox Schwartz, The CWA, 1933–1934:
The Business of Emergency Employment in the New Deal. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984; Edward A. Williams, Federal
Aid for Relief. NewYork: Columbia University Press,
1939.
APPENDIX: ON WORKFARE [See also Goldberg, The
Right to Work and to Welfare]
"People have a legal right to food stamps if they meet the
statutory requirements, but since 1996 there has been no legal
right to cash assistance. And so welfare, generally speaking,
has not cushioned the impact of the recession…..some advocates
of welfare reform seemed to consider poverty a voluntary condition,
one curable with a quick kick in the pants and the opportunity
to work for minimum wage. There were not enough jobs even then,
but, blinded by the economic boom of the 1990s, the authors of
TANF [welfare "reform"] seemed to think that the business
cycle had been abolished and that prosperity would take us only
onward and upward." Peter Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich
Washington
Post,
12/6/09
Workfare is not the same as job creation programs
Job creation programs are meant for unemployed people normally
seen as working for wages, so programs generally pay market wages
and provide socially useful work. In contrast, workfare is a worktest.
It is designed for welfare recipients, and assumes that only lack
of motivation, not lack of jobs or lack of child care, keeps welfare
recipients out of paid employment. Workfare, which has proliferated
since the early 1980s, forces relief recipients to do additional
work outside the home in order to remain eligible for welfare.
Typically, workfare programs pay little attention to participants’
skills. But regardless of the kind of work performed, workfare
is not a job. Unlike other workers, people on workfare assignments
do not receive a wage in the traditional sense and, under the
current welfare law, they lack rights of other American workers,
such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, and credit/eligibility for
Social Security and unemployment compensation.
People sometimes "work off" their welfare payments
in a Community Work Experience Program. For example, workfare
participants in New York City have done park maintenance and street
cleaning. There is nothing demeaning about those jobs. In fact,
pruning trees, keeping parks in ship-shape, and streets clean
are important jobs that contribute to the quality of life. New
York’s Sanitation and Parks Department jobs are highly prized,
but that is because workers are "employees," with decent
wages, benefits and working conditions. People on workfare, however,
work off their benefits at what amounts to a fraction of a regular
worker’s pay. More often, welfare recipients are pushed
into the low-wage labor market where they usually find jobs paying
close to the minimum wage. That is, if they can find jobs at all.
The welfare law signed by President Clinton in 1996, justified
as "ending welfare dependency" by forcing recipients
off the rolls and into paid work, worsened this situation. The
law disregards the economic hazards of the low-wage labor market:
low wages, which usually come without health benefits, are simply
not enough to live on, let alone cover the costs of child care
or health care.[1] And the law ignores the value of work in the
home raising children. Since it is not paid work, it is not considered
real work. It is "real" work only when women are paid
to care for someone else’s children.
Not only that. Because workfare increases the number of job seekers
without increasing the number of jobs, it tends to further depress
wages, standards, and security for millions of workers and weaken
unions. Many regular workers would be shocked to learn that workfare
threatens not only welfare recipients. It also threatens them,
since they are forced to compete for the same number of jobs with
those lacking any protection. In contrast, fair work creates additional
jobs and thus reduces the pool of job seekers. This strengthens
the ability of workers to maintain and even raise their wages
and work standards.
In sum, workfare, which stigmatizes and humiliates the poor,
undermines wages and standards for all workers while fair work
strengthens their position. These relationships are not widely
understood by workers, although they are by business. As a result,
workfare has been politically popular, while public employment
programs have been the target of effective, unremitting criticisms
by conservatives and business.
Notes:
1. The end of welfare also means the end of Medicaid eligibility,
sometimes after a short transition period.
_____ Editors: Helen Ginsburg, Economics (Emer),
Brooklyn College, CUNY, and June Zaccone, Economics (Emer.), Hofstra
University
|
