By Josipa Petrunic
A group of local union activists is planning a campaign against organizations in Ottawa that provide welfare recipients with workfare placements.
Spokespersons for the Welfare Recipients for Fair Employment say they will write letters, take out advertisements and picket on the doorsteps of organizations that use workfare labour.
“We are going to make it miserable for these organizations to operate until they meet one demand. And that is take these people on as paid employees,” says John Hollingsworth, one of the organizers.
The group says trying to lobby the province to change its welfare laws would be useless, so targeting local organizations that help implement the laws is its only option.
Under the 1997 Ontario Works Act, “workfare” stipulates people who receive welfare — except for the elderly, single parents and other special cases — must fulfil a minimum number of hours volunteering in community placements where they learn skills that will help them find jobs.
City officials have confirmed that if people are able-bodied, but refuse to fulfil their quota of volunteering hours, they are denied a welfare cheque.
Hollingsworth says that proves workfare is “exploitation.”
He says many welfare recipients have also complained workfare is a waste of time, because they didn’t learn new skills and often didn’t find jobs afterward.
“Some . . . organizations actually think they’re doing good by giving people a workfare placement,” Hollingsworth says, adding there are about 150 to 200 such organizations in Ottawa.
“But that just shows a lack of analysis on their part. They don’t realize these are often useless skills that people are getting. And they’re not getting paid.”
However, officials who run workfare caution the activists against going into a battle they might not fully understand.
Dick Stewart, head of the city’s people services department, says although not every workfare placement ends up in a job, many welfare recipients do benefit from the experience.
“Often when these people are out in the community is doesn’t appear as if the function they’re doing will help them go down the street and sell themselves to an employer,” he says.
“But many of the people who are with us now are those who have been (on welfare) for longer periods of time.They are the ones who might need more investment and effort before they get back into the workforce.”
For those people, he says, workfare works because it helps develop “soft skills,” such as communication and organization by getting them back into a workplace atmosphere.
Organizations which have been involved in the workfare program are divided over its benefits.
The United Nations Association in Canada used to provide two placements, but decided to pull out of the program early last year.
“We found it was too short term. (Welfare recipients) spent an awful lot of time in a small office, with a small staff in a non-government organization,” says Joan Broughton, spokesperson for the association.
“It didn’t work that well for us, in terms of our ability to give the amount of training that was really required, if one was going to be fair to the people who were being placed. We didn’t want to be a holding operation.”
Other organizations, such as the Arthritis Society, have continued to provide their placements, arguing some of their former workfare employees have gone on to find jobs afterward.