Last year's Welfare Reform Act, signed into law amidst rhetoric extolling "tough love" and an "end to welfare as we know it," not only left the poor with nowhere to turn but it took the floor from under the feet of America's working people. Organized labor, however, has begun mobilizing in earnest to prevent the implementation of the most crippling aspects of the new legislation.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council has drawn up a three-pronged action program: At the state level where states are writing new eligibility legislation, at the national level where primary focus is on implementation of current law through administrative regulations; and finally, at the local level.

Let us first explore the scope and impact of the new "welfare reform" legislation. The previous legislation, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), was an entitlement program supervised by the federal government: if a family met certain requirements that family would receive a monthly stipend for as long as it continued to meet the requirements.

AFDC has now been abolished and with it the concept of entitlement. No longer supplied on an as-needed basis, federal aid is given in block grants to states which must establish their own programs. To be eligible, states must maintain social spending at 80 percent of their 1994 spending. While this may prevent serious cuts today, (caseloads are down) when caseloads grow, as they inevitably will, and funds become exhausted over the course of a year, no further benefits will be provided - period.

The safety net is gone: without money there can be no benefits. All of this has the rather perverted sense of logic inherent in all self-fulfilling prophecies: caseloads will then necessarily become even smaller because there is no money to carry them.

Although annual AFDC spending seldom exceeded one percent of the federal budget, funding for the new program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), includes specific cuts of $55 billion in cash assistance, nearly half in the food stamps program. Many working poor are also welfare recipients who use benefits as additional income or when they are between jobs.

Unemployed workers without children are now eligible to receive food stamps for only a total of three months of every 36-month period during which they are unemployed, even if they are actively - but unsuccessfully - seeking work. Food stamp benefits themselves have been cut 20 percent - from about 80 cents per-person-per-meal to 66 cents. No federal money will be forthcoming to provide benefits for anyone for more than five years during his or her entire lifetime.

TANF legislation also sets work participation rates that states must meet in order to continue receiving their block grants. During 1997 one quarter of all families must be working; by the year 2002 and thereafter, half of all families must be working - and 90 percent of two-parent families. An individual must work at least 20 hours a week or, if in a two-parent family, 30 hours.

The immediate threat to America's working people stems from the indefinite nature of the requirements placed on those forced off welfare. Given today's job market one might assume that if the government insists that welfare recipients work it will provide them with jobs in community or public service. Previous legislation, the Community Work Experience Program (CWEP) of AFDC, required that work done by welfare recipients be "in the public good." This is no longer the case.

As President Clinton told a group of business leaders, "We cannot create enough public service jobs to hire these folks; so they have to be hired in the private sector. This is basically a private sector affair," he said.

Worker displacement as a result of this legislation also poses a new threat in that there are only two provisions in TANF to protect currently employed workers: 1) Workers currently laid off may not be replaced and 2) an employer may not reduce the work force in order to take on workfare participants. Nothing is said about the reduction of regular hours, striker replacement or moving facilities to create new slots.

Under previous legislation established unfilled slots could not be filled by workfare participants. There is no provision dealing with this in the current legislation. Workfare participants are not entitled to the federal minimum wage or to workers'' compensation, to protection under OSHA regulations or federal anti discrimination laws. Nor are they entitled to grievance procedures unless their work is in subsidized jobs.

The new legislation does not even specify that workfare participants are covered by the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). They are therefore not entitled, in the words of FLSA, to "labor conditions [that] maintain. . .the minimum standard of living necessary for the health, efficiency and general well-being of workers" and to the protection such regulations afford against the unfair competition that results from the lack of such protection.

The AFL-CIO will argue in court cases - and directly to the federal government when it formulates the regulations that the legislation implies - that workfare participants must be defined as workers for the purposes of the law and that they be employed in fact as workers.

The Chamber of Commerce however, speaking for Corporate America, has made it clear in its statement, Legal Disincentives to Hiring Welfare Recipients, that it does not want workfare recipients to be covered by and to receive the protections guaranteed in the FLSA or any other legislation not specifically mentioned in the new law. Even with a tax credit of $5,000 for each workfare participant hired, the Chamber warns employers they may be sued under the provisions of FLSA or other worker protection legislation.

Other legislation on the chamber's hit list includes the Family and Medical Leave Act, which entitles workers to partially paid leave for family or personal medical reasons; the Davis Bacon Act, which mandates payment of prevailing union wages and benefits on federally funded construction projects; the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991 and the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. (See 3/22 PWW for related article.)

This, briefly, is the framework of current welfare legislation, and it paints a grim picture of the future for America's working people. When fully implemented the flood of new workers will result in the loss of thousands of jobs - mostly those of low-paid workers - and the general depression of wage rates and benefits and the erosion of decent working conditions for all workers. To meet this formidable challenge the AFL-CIO has published Labor Confronts Welfare Reform: An AFL-CIO Guide to State Activity.

In a statement describing the new welfare law and workers's rights the AFL-CIO says, "State laws are now a central battleground. The AFL-CIO, together with state federations and central councils, affiliates, and community allies, will insist on minimum wage and prevailing wage standards, anti-displacement provisions, strong grievance procedures, and measures to restrict private provision of historically public functions. The AFL-CIO will work in coalition with other groups to ensure that child care, education, transportation, and other key supports are provided to help former welfare recipients enter and remain in the labor market."

On a national scale the AFL-CIO will press for legislation to ensure the availability of food stamps for unemployed workers and to restore health care cuts. The AFL-CIO will support federal action to create jobs for welfare recipients, but it is opposed to tax breaks for companies who then pay lower wages to workfare participants.

Within the workplace the AFL-CIO will look to integrate workfare participants into existing bargaining units and will include them in aggressive organizing campaigns. Union members will be mobilized to support these workers' fight "for workplace dignity and living wages as the real route to economic self-sufficiency."