Finding the Value in Hard Work

She needed instruction in everything from filling out a job application to cleaning a tub to deciphering the schedule of buses she’d take to get to her hotel housekeeping job on time. She needed financial help to buy groceries and pay for upkeep on the rickety house our parents had left her when they died. She needed child care for her young son during the hours she’d have to spend away.

And most of all, my little sister--pregnant, unmarried and unskilled, and just barely out of her teens--needed to be seen as more than a woman reeking of failure, with an outstretched, empty palm. She was not looking for a handout, but a hand up; she needed a lifeline to succeed.

Her redemption came through a welfare system that we’ve made sport of disparaging. Job training, child care, transportation subsidies

That is still true today for millions of families, watching anxiously as Congress considers changes to our nation’s welfare system, as its funding provisions expire this week.

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Five years ago, welfare reform ushered in an era that was supposed to promote self-sufficiency rather than dependency by imposing strict deadlines on welfare recipients to find jobs or lose eligibility.

The program has worked to cut welfare rolls and put millions to work. More than half the adults who were on welfare when the laws changed are no longer on welfare today. Los Angeles County sent more than 150,000 people from welfare into the labor force in the first four years of the welfare-to-work program.

But does that mean it’s a success? Depends on your measure.

Surveys of former welfare recipients have found that most were glad to be on the job, rather than on the dole, with between two-thirds and three-quarters of them saying life had not been better under welfare. But as many as a third of those who got jobs lost them and landed back on welfare within a year. And 40% of those who left welfare for jobs wound up poorer than when they relied on government aid.

Those numbers tell a story legislators need to hear. Most folks would rather work than take a government check, but welfare reform will only produce long-term effects if we give states the flexibility to consider recipients’ myriad needs.

Too often the debate has evolved into a battle over welfare’s role. Promoters of toughening the rules say its primary role is to get folks off the dole. Their critics say its aim is to protect the well-being of children who would otherwise be raised in poverty.

But do those things have to be at odds? Can’t we recognize that any welfare system needs to provide child care, education and training, but that there is also value in holding any job, even a low-paying one? Reforms in welfare may not lift all families out of poverty but can pay dividends over time. And isn’t part of ensuring the well-being of children teaching them independence and responsibility?

Forsaking welfare for work doesn’t tend to improve a family’s bottom line. Too many unskilled workers stuck in low-wage jobs translates to too many families unable to earn their way out of poverty. We need to make sure those children don’t suffer by providing access to medical care and working for educational parity.

But children learn what they live. How do you measure the value of seeing your parents work? Even when those parents are stuck in low-wage jobs, there’s a lesson for their kids to learn: If you want a better life than your parents had, prepare to earn it, so that you can take care of yourself.

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It was a bit of a family scandal when my sister ended up on welfare in the 1980s. But in the three years until she married, got job training and was able to leave welfare behind, those monthly payments helped her meet her young son’s needs. Back then, even before welfare was reformed, there were opportunities for job training for those who wanted to change.

She found a job in hotel housekeeping. The work is hard, the pay is low, the hours are long, the routine grueling. Her paycheck sometimes barely stretches to cover her necessities. But she’s made her peace with making beds, scrubbing tubs, tending the messes travelers leave, if that’s what it takes to help provide for her family. At home, she keeps a small file of commendations and thank-you notes, from bosses impressed by her diligence and patrons grateful for her extra touches.

And she and her husband, both working full-time, have managed to raise their only child, now 19, to understand that the tuition at his parochial school, the jackets that he continually outgrew, the collection of video games, his basketball shoes ... those came not through the government’s grudging largess, but from the effort his parents made each day.

Now, that young man rises early, takes two buses to the local community college to study math and science and creative writing, then rides another two buses to a grocery store, where he spends his evening bagging groceries. He’s saving for a car, then an apartment, then preparing to raise his own family.

That is the value of working versus welfare, measured not in a quick calculation of paychecks and government benefits, but through its deeper impact on succeeding generations.

Yes, we owe struggling families opportunity--job training, child care, education, and a playing field level enough to allow them to rise.

And those families owe something as well--a willingness to sacrifice not just so that their children can eat, but so that they can envision a future tied not to a welfare check, but to talents, energy and dedication that, without a push, might go unrecognized.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is [email protected]