Workfare

From Freepedia

Workfare is an alternative model to conventional Social Welfare systems. Traditional welfare benefits are available with little required of the recipient, save their continued search for employment. Under workfare, recipients commonly have to attend special training programs or are simply forced into the work force. These programs, now common in the United States and Canada have generated considerable debate and controversy.

Arguments Supporting Workfare Programs

• Reduced government spending due to the removal of people from the welfare rolls.
• Moving welfare recipients into the workforce, even in entry level positions, has the potential to lead to future mobility. Collecting welfare, however, only prepares the recipient to continue to collect welfare.
• There is empirical evidence (esp. from the Clinton years in the U.S.) that workfare is a more effective means of alleviating poverty than traditional welfare.
• In some communities, particularly in rural areas, living on public assistance becomes a way of life with little opportunity for improvement.

Arguments Against Workfare Programs

• Often, the skills employers are looking for include literacy and familiarity with modern information technology. Workfare training programs offer few (or no) skills that apply outside a McJob.
• Since many systems of workfare continue to pay only welfare benefits (and not an actual hourly wage/salary) during the first several months of employment, the programs are often characterized as implementing a modern-day equivalent of slave labour (providing only a subsistence wage so work may continue) -- doubly so since the jobs are often menial or labour-intensive.
• Workfare programs are demeaning, and add to the stigma that welfare recipients are lazy, unmotivated, and would do nothing unless the state intervened.
• If there are simply no jobs available (such as in a recession), the extra expense of administering workfare programs is not offset by the reduced costs of 'removing' people from the welfare rolls.
• As discussed in the 2002 Michael Moore documentary film Bowling for Columbine, work requirements for welfare funds can put a strain on families with young children, especially when the families are headed by single mothers. Some, however, have countered this argument by positing that there is a benefit to children of having a parental role model who is working, even when left at home alone for most of their free time.