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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 30, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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NYC Workfare workers fight City Hall

By Judi Cheng in New York

"Workfare workers, we're not slaves, we want jobs at union wage!"

That chant could be heard echoing through City Hall Park above the traffic coming off the Brooklyn Bridge on Jan. 15, the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Workfairness, an organization of workfare workers and their supporters, held a press conference on the steps of City Hall demanding respect, dignity and real wages for those in the Work Experience Program. About 40 to 50 WEP workers and their supporters attended, carrying signs that read "We demand justice for WEP workers" and "Stop the slavery!"

Union representatives also came to show their support, including Trudy Rudnick, president of Local 3882 of the American Federation of Teachers, Ray LaForest of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and Vice President Saraw Kennedy of AFSCME Local 420.

Members of the press from listener-sponsored radio station WBAI, the Village Voice, the Chief, and the Amsterdam News covered the event.

Holding up a box of petitions and cards from more than 1,500 New York City WEP workers authorizing Workfairness to represent them, Vondora Jordan, a WEP worker and co-chair of Workfairness, said, "We want the Giuliani administration to stop what we call the terror campaign, which is the policy of using any flimsy excuse to drop workfare workers and anyone on public assistance from the program."

William Mason, a WEP worker and co-chair of Workfairness, read a letter to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Governor George Pataki, saying, "We want to talk about health and safety issues, pay equity, [the issue of] forcing people to leave school for workfare, complaints of harassment, and most importantly, the prospects for permanent, unionized employment for workfare workers."

When a group of WEP workers and their supporters trying to get past police and barricades were prevented from entering the press conference area, they chanted demanding to be let in. Almost immediately, the press conference participants moved over to the chanting crowd where both groups merged together into a picket line.

Workfairness is calling on union workers and the labor movement for organizational support. Every day it becomes clearer that the workfare program is designed to replace union jobs having decent pay and benefits with workfare workers forced into virtual slave labor.

The real purpose of workfare is not to move people from welfare to work but to undermine and weaken unions, turning the clock back on workers' wages, conditions, rights and job security.

Right now in New York City alone, 40,000 workfare workers labor in both the public and private sector without wages, without union support, and without a promise of permanent, unionized employment. The number is expected to double in the coming year.

Through the Workfairness organizing drive, workfare workers are organizing and fighting back against the bipartisan attacks on the poor.

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