SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 4679 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE WAYS AND MEANS

SUBCOMMITTEE: HUMAN RESOURCE

HEADLINE: WELFARE OVERHAUL PROPOSALS

TESTIMONY-BY: PAT ALBRIGHT,

AFFILIATION: EVERY MOTHER IS A WORKING MOTHER, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

BODY:
Statement of

Pat Albright, Every Mother is a Working Mother, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Former Welfare Recipient)

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House

Committee on Ways and Means

Hearing on Welfare Reform Reauthorization Proposals

April 11, 2002

Background and Overview

The Every Mother Is A Working Mother Network (EMWM) is submitting our recommendations below in response to your solicitation of comments on the Reauthorization of the TANF Program Authority. EMWM is a multi-racial, grassroots community-based network of mothers and other caregivers campaigning to establish that raising children and caring work is work, and that the time mothers spend raising their children, and the economic value of their work should be included in the right to welfare and other resources.

Our testimony is not attempting to be "professional"; we are speaking from our experience and our hearts. Everyday we live the impact of welfare "reform". We in EMWM are not part of the advocacy sector or poverty lobby; we do not have a staff/client relationship with anyone. We are not paid professional organizers; we are volunteers. We are unfunded, and independent; we are not aligned with any political party. Some of us are or have been on welfare and/or other benefits; some of us have disabilities; some are single mothers; some are grandmothers; all of us are carers and so we all have a personal stake in the valuation of the caring work of mothers in welfare benefits. We care deeply about those we care for and suffer greatly as a result of the tremendous devaluation of caring for children and others that we see rampant in policy, the media and other areas of society.

EMWM held a series of Community Dialogues on welfare reform on the East and West Coasts in July 2001 where a new grassroots movement announced itself, demanding the right of mothers to raise our own children. We are now holding "teach-ins" in several cities on both coasts bringing together moms and other carers on welfare with other members of the community under the banner "Invest in Caring Not Killing".

In our experience, TANF has greatly neglected the profound importance of the bonding and nurturing between mothers and our children. It has neglected the importance of the choice to breastfeed. It has ignored the research that establishes that not only in the early years of life, but also as teenagers, children need their mothers, and that reduction in mother/child time has negatively impacted the development, emotionally and otherwise, of our children. It has by-passed the obvious: that as mothers we are in the best position to determine if and when our children are ready to be cared for outside the home or by a non-custodial parent. It has treated the relationship between mothers and children as standing in the way of the glory of what is really important: a job outside the home, as though the job of caring for one's own children is a nuisance. What kind of society is it that ignores these very basic human rights, of a child to a mother's care and of a mother to care for her own child or to determine under what circumstances others should care for them? Within this context, we cannot take seriously any talk of "family values" from those at the helm of HHS. There is a double standard at play here and one that is grounded both in racism and in discrimination against caregivers. Welfare "reform" clearly establishes that only those who can afford to should be able to care for their own children and since 2/3 of those receiving benefits are women and children of color, the racist implications should be obvious.

For those of us who have been forced out to waged work, the conditions that we have to leave our children under are undermining to both our children and those who care for them. In California, for example, the infant/adult ratio in infant care centers ranges from 3-1 or 4-1. We consider this promoting child abuse. Since when is one adult able to nurture, hold, cuddle, sing to, and comfort three or four babies at the same time? No wonder pediatricians can tell which babies have been in infant care from the so-called "flat-head" syndrome resulting from long hours of lying in a crib. Even walkers are often not allowed and babies are stuck lying around all day without the kind of one- on-one love and care that only a mother or main caregiver can provide. And the pay of childcare providers is an insult; for a relative care provider, it is often below the minimum wage. This is not to say that mothers should not have the choice to work outside the home and access to quality childcare, but it must be a mother's choice and not a mandate and the conditions of care and the pay of the workers must be greatly improved.

In addition, there has been no consideration whatsoever of the care of sick children. How can policy that impacts children be made without considering that children get sick? And why should a mother have to choose between welfare "reform" mandates, the time clock and being there to care for her sick child? This is abusive to both child and mother. Anyone who has had to be away from a sick child must know the kind of worry and concern that distracts one from any other task at hand. Every life is of value, including the lives of mothers on welfare and our children. Our children are not cars to be parked in a garage. They are fragile, curious, vibrant beings full of need and potential and they have every right to our care. And the 30 minutes or less of waking time that mothers with infants who are in mandated-work activities tells the story of the failure of the Department of Health and Human Services to either provide health or be humane.

Mothers on welfare also have every right to choose to work outside the home and when we do, we must have pay equity, quality childcare of our choice, protection from discrimination and education and training of our choice.

EMWM is determined in our resolve. We are well aware that the aim of welfare "reform" was to instill in us that we have no entitlement to resources to care for our own children. We hope that you are aware that there is a growing grassroots movement in this country and around the world for the valuation of caring work. The valuation of caring work is a unifying issue and brings support from those not on welfare to those who are. We are fed up with caregivers being ignored by government and professional advocates. As mothers and grandmothers, we are insisting that we, who produce all the workers in this country and the world, be no longer ignored and by-passed. Those of us who are trained to kill in the army receive economic support, but those of us who give and sustain life are not. And those carers who are most vulnerable, single mothers on welfare, must have the economic support needed to care for themselves and their children on the basis of the caring work they do. Our experience has been that the poorer we are the harder we are forced to work, and for too long mothers on welfare have had the impossible task of trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.

EMWM is coordinated by the Wages for Housework Campaign (WFH) which after close to three decades has put the valuation of caring work on national and international agendas. WFH founded and coordinated the International Women Count Network of more than 1, 200 Non-Governmental Organizations world-wide which succeeded in winning UN resolutions calling for governments to measure and value unwaged work (including care giving work) in satellite accounts of the GDP. WFH also worked with the Congressional Black Caucus which in 1993 introduced the "Unremunerated Work Act" which received bi-partisan support and called for unwaged work to be measured and valued. The US Dept of Labor, specifically the BLS has held at least one international conference on the valuation of caring and other unwaged work in addition to other efforts to implement the UN decision. Another document we suggest HHS reviews is the Platform for Action passed at the first US Women's Conference held in Houston Texas in 1977, specifically the "Women, Welfare and Poverty" resolution which was written by grassroots activists including at least two past presidents of the National Welfare Rights Organization along with WFH. We urge HHS to review the above-mentioned documents in preparing your recommendations to fix welfare "reform".

Summary of Recommendations

1.The work done by mothers or other caregivers raising children is a valuable contribution to the economy and society and should be reflected in welfare benefits. Mothers, grandmothers and other caregivers must not be required to work outside the home as a condition of receiving benefits. Mothering is real work; what we lack are real resources.

2.Mothers who choose to work outside the home should be entitled to pay equity, affordable quality childcare of choice, paid breastfeeding breaks (in accordance with the International Labor Organization), and protections from sexual harassment, and other job supports.

3.Welfare benefits must be increased and indexed to the cost of living.

4.Time limits on receiving welfare benefits must be eliminated.

5.Mothers must not be required to identify the father or sue for child support as a condition of receiving benefits.

6.Women must not be pushed into marriage.

7.Mothers receiving benefits should have the right to education and training of choice, including the right to attend a four-year college. Participation in education and training should be counted as work activity.

8.No discrimination in access to benefits, including based on immigration status, race, disability, criminal record, or sexual preference.

9.Federal legislation on welfare should include national standards, protections and guidelines that states must abide by.

Rationale and Discussion

1. The work done by mothers or other caregivers raising children is a valuable contribution to the economy and society and should be reflected in welfare benefits. Mothers should not be required to work outside the home as a condition of receiving benefits.

Caregivers are the heart of the economy, yet are ignored and discriminated against in welfare and other policy. Caring is vital to the survival and welfare of every community and every society. Mothers and other carers are entitled to welfare on the basis of how much the caring work we do is worth to society. Mothers, including mothers on welfare, are the first carers and women remain the main carers. We give birth to, feed and care for all in society. Yet beyond lip service this 24-hour-a-day job is devalued or not valued at all by government and industry. As a result, not only mothers but caring itself and the people we have raised are devalued and our needs ignored.

Many mothers are forced out to a second or third job, even though our children need us. Children as young as six weeks old are deprived of the love, care and attention they need and are entitled to. And mothers-exhausted by the double or triple day of waged work on top of unwaged work-are deprived of the time and energy we would like to put into our children. Increasingly we are forced to give up breastfeeding, denying children the best and most natural food in favor of formula, or to keep our children quiet with Ritalin, Prozac or other highly addictive drugs-we are asked to be more available to the job market than to our children. It is unbearable that the richest and most powerful country in the world invests in the military and everything else it seems while it has no money for caring for children and others who need care.

According to the State of the World's Children 2001 a key UN goal is for states to "develop national and child and family policies that allow parents increased time to meet their child-rearing responsibilities and that encourage family-given childcare. A survey released Oct 22, 2001 by the After School Alliance in the US has found that nearly 40% of US teens have no adult supervision after school. 75% of teens report that they are more afraid after school hours of being a victim of violence or crime. The National Center for Laity has noted in its October 2001 issue that in the US there is no economic incentive for a parent to be home to care for his or her own children. They observe that the government subsidizes childcare outside the home or gives a tax deduction if someone else cares for your child in your home, but gives no allotment if you provide the care yourself.

According to the NGO Families International, more family members have to work more hours outside the home which has eroded the well being of families. Parents have experienced much higher levels of stress and tension. The report further states: "When parents cannot be "present" . . . to their children, it results in diminished support . . . diminished attention to their accomplishments, hopes, fears, problems and questions."

There is growing national and international support for the work of raising children and other caring work to be recognized as work, in response to women ourselves demanding that our work be counted. Many economists, statisticians and other academics have done studies documenting the amount of time women spend raising children and doing other unwaged work and the importance of the contribution of this work to the functioning of society, too numerous to list here. In 1995, after an international mobilization spearheaded by EMWM's coordinating group, at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the US and other governments agreed to measure and value women's unwaged work and to include its value in national statistical data and satellite accounts of the Gross Domestic Product. The 1995 UN resolution strengthened one previously won by WFH in 1985 at the UN Mid-Decade Conference held in Nairobi. Kenya during the Reagan administration. The 1995 agreement is considered by many to be the most important macroeconomic decision to emerge from the UN Conferences on women, but the US has yet to take steps to implement it. On the contrary, current welfare policy under TANF is in violation of, and in opposition to, this agreement in that it dis-counts the work of mothers raising children, and mandates that mothers' work outside the home for 30 hours or more per week as a condition of receiving benefits.

Caring work is highly skilled. Mothers have to do simultaneous tasks to get the job done, a skill usually associated in industry with management. In May 1999, the Wall Street Journal reported a study that found that the "multi-tasking" work done by a mother is valued at $500,000 a year. Economists have developed various models of calculating the value of a mother's work, based on the many different jobs, the number of hours and the prevailing market wage for those jobs if done by another person. On a global level, the United Nations estimates that the value of women's unwaged work is $11 trillion (1995 figures). By contrast, welfare benefits force women and children to live far below the poverty line, and are in part responsible for the fact that women are the majority of the poor in this country.

Economically rewarding those who do caring work already has some precedents. In Montana and Minnesota, mothers are paid for caring for their infants full-time, out of funds that the states have allotted for childcare. In California, family members can be paid by the county as homecare workers to care for low-income elderly or disabled relatives. The Clinton administration's proposal that parents have the option of drawing unemployment benefits while staying home to care for small children was picked up by six states. And in most industrialized countries, including Canada, all mothers are eligible to receive a family allowance or child benefit that is not means-tested, in recognition of the reality that mothers need and have a right to economic support. In addition, low-income mothers receive welfare. Nearly all countries, including some of the poorest in the world, have a policy of paid maternity leave: the United States is one of only six countries surveyed by the UN that has no such policy. And most give a subsidy for breastfeeding.

2. Mothers who choose to work outside the home should be entitled to pay equity, affordable quality childcare of choice, paid breastfeeding breaks (as recommended by the International Labor Organization), protections from sexual harassment and other job supports.

Welfare reform has contributed to the widening pay gap between women and men, according to some economists. Women in full-time year-round employment earn 72% of what men earn; for African- American women the figure is 62%, and for Latina women 52%. Most women, because we are responsible also for raising children, work in part-time temporary jobs where the wages are even lower, and the benefits non-existent. Welfare reform denies our right to choose whether or not to breastfeed and to otherwise nurture our babies and older children. Mothers of young children report having less than 30 minutes a day of waking time with our babies. This will get worse when the time on the 60-month time clock for receiving benefits runs out and we will be left destitute with no safety net.

Even a recent HHS report found that only l.5 million of the 9.9 million children who are eligible for childcare subsidies receive it. Studies have also shown that childcare is the third greatest expense for families with children between 3 and 5 years old, after housing and food; and that a family of three earning $15,000 spends between 24 and 45% of their income on childcare. Most families use informal care, often by a grandmother, and welfare "reform" expects grandmothers after a lifetime of raising their own children to be available to care for grandchildren for free or for below the minimum wage. Low-income grandmothers are already living below the poverty level on the pittance provided by SSI.

3. Welfare benefits should be increased and indexed to the cost of living.

Welfare benefits have nowhere near kept up with the rate of inflation and increases in the cost of living. Cuts in welfare means more women and children living in poverty, and more of us homeless, dead, or turning to prostitution or otherwise "criminalized" trying to feed our kids. Welfare reform has put our lives and the lives of our children in jeopardy: we are pushed to the limit financially, physically and emotionally. We hold HHS accountable for the thousands of mothers and children who are now destitute as a result of welfare reform. Thousands more are among the welfare "disappeared" - no one knows what has happened to them, but they are often counted as part of the welfare "success story" simply because they are no longer on the welfare rolls.

4. Time limits on receiving welfare benefits must be eliminated.

Time limits are punitive and prevent caregivers from carrying out their responsibilities to children. It is up to mothers, not the government, to say when a child is no longer in need of a mother's full-time care. The clock runs in times of economic crisis when waged work is scarce. The clock runs when a child is sick and needs a mother's care. No woman can control when she will be in need of benefits. Most of us are just a man away from welfare. The time clock is an intimidation keeping many of us in abusive relationships and vulnerable to emotional and physical violence for fear of complete destitution. The clock does not recognize the value of a mother's time caring for her family. Time limits are running out for many women just when the economy is in a steep downturn and layoffs are massively increasing. Without a safety net, what are women to do? By 2002 1.3 million people, most of whom are single mothers will be destitute.

Communities of color are at even greater risk of crisis as unemployment in Black communities, for example, is double that of white communities. In addition, a higher percentage of people of color are ineligible for unemployment benefits: their jobs are more likely to be part-time, temporary or seasonal. Welfare provided the only unemployment benefit available to many in those situations, but now that is gone. In rural areas including on Native reservations, waged work just isn't there. And particularly in those communities wages don't follow from work. People need to be paid for work they are doing that is now unwaged. Without such efforts, there is bound to be increased destitution, homelessness, and ill health, not only physical but emotional; with communities of color hardest hit, reinforcing a racist hierarchy.

5. Mothers must not be required to identify the father or sue for child support as a condition of receiving benefits.

Under current regulations, a woman is mandated to name the father of her child and sue him for child support whether she wants to or not, with all or most of the money going to the welfare department, not to her or the child. Many mothers, including lesbian mothers, do not want the father to have any part in their lives or their children's, often because he is abusive or uncaring; others have worked out their own arrangements. Women in domestic violence shelters say that women often turn to welfare as their only way to leave violent men. To force such women to have contact with these men is to set up women and children for further rape and abuse.

6. Women must not be pushed into marriage.

We are aware of the so-called "family formation" agenda being promoted by some in the Bush administration, most notably Wade Horn, as the "solution" to women's poverty. Multi-million dollar programs are proposed to promote marriage and the involvement of fathers. We are all for loving relationships and everyone's right to marry (including lesbian women and gay men), but not for women to be forced into marriage, under the threat that their benefits will be cut or reduced. We want to marry for love, not for money, and men want to know that we are with them because we love them, not because of the money they earn. Women have fought for several decades for our right to be financially independent of men, and have established the importance of having money of our own as the first line of defense against complete dependence and starvation, and as a protection against violence against ourselves and our children. We have also fought for the right to not have to marry. We do not intend to have the clock turned back to the dark ages where women had to submit to sex for a bit of housekeeping money. This official proposal is only a step away from sexual trafficking in women, which we do not believe most people in the US would endorse.

7. Mothers receiving benefits should have the right to education and training of choice, including the right to attend a four-year college. Participation in education and training should be counted as work activity.

Welfare "reform" takes us back more than two decades on access to education and training which could make a real difference to women's ability to obtain jobs with income levels above the poverty line. In addition, mothers on welfare must have the same right as anyone else to pursue higher education. In the 1970s, students on welfare in the SEEK program at the City University of New York pressed for and won the right to receive both welfare and student stipends to attend a four-year college without one reducing the level of the other. Under welfare reform, mothers are not allowed at all to pursue a four-year college education. This is a violation of our human rights. Women are exhausted raising children, working at low-waged jobs, and trying to pursue a degree. One woman was so exhausted and so pressed to meet her next deadline that her judgment was impaired as she stepped out on the highway after her car broke down and was killed. Being a student is in itself a full-time job on top of the work of being a mother and should be acknowledged as such.

8. No discrimination in access to benefits, including based on immigration status, race, disability, or sexual preference.

We oppose any denial of benefits based on immigration status. The United States is, after all, a country of, and built by, immigrant people. Nearly one-fourth of all children of immigrants live in poverty. They account for 23% of all poor children in the US. Two-thirds of welfare recipients are now women and children of color. Our experience has been that women of color are receiving the worst treatment in relation to work assignments, access to information and services like childcare. This is on top of the institutional racism in the waged labor market, resulting in Black and Latina women receiving the lowest wages, and in every other area of life. Some of the most punitive components of welfare reform - for example "family cap" policies - are in states that have the highest proportion of women of color receiving benefits. Women with disabilities who are supposed to be exempt, in many cases are being forced into work assignments, and there is at least one documented case in New York City where a woman died as a result. We have also learned from our network in Wisconsin that women with disabilities have received the worst job placements - the jobs that were left to women unable to be hired in the private sector - and are working under conditions like the poorhouse of the past. Welfare "reform" also denies the work of disability where caring for oneself is a full-time job. Being forced to name their child's father, who may in fact be a sperm donor, and facing the possibility of losing custody of children to the state by a social worker who declares them "unfit" is discriminatory against lesbian mothers. In other cases, the father may seek custody on the basis that if he is going to pay, he is entitled to raise the child. Many lesbian and gay young people, thrown out by parents, are facing homelessness and turn to prostitution to survive because welfare reform requires those under 18 to live at home to receive benefits.

9. Federal legislation on welfare should include national standards, protections and guidelines that states cannot waive out of.

The legal right of states to enslave and segregate was fought over and defeated in the Civil War and the civil rights movement, but welfare "reform" gives power back to individual states. Are women, many Black and Latina women, in sections of the country with the highest rates of rural and inner city poverty, to be at the mercy of a local white male racist establishment? Are we to tolerate policies such as TANF which promote disparities in standards of living in different parts of the country? We say no to these, and no to any other policies which attempt to eliminate federal standards, protections and guidelines and turn back the clock to 1863.

Finally, we are alarmed at the reauthorization process thus far. The HHS "Listening Sessions" have been government behind closed doors: a few are handpicked to testify and in some instances half of the slots are given to the likes of the Heritage Foundation. In other so-called open "listening sessions" held only after protests on both coasts, the testimony is token, bypassed by top HHS officials and not even taped. This is not acceptable. HHS gives the impression that they are listening when in fact the voices of mothers on welfare are being shut out and shut up. We also want to know what is to happen to written testimony, particularly from grassroots networks like ours who do not have the money to hire experts to spend months writing testimony, and who don't have paid lobbyists on the hill. We are the experts, we and our children are living examples of the discriminatory effect of welfare "reform," and we are demanding that our testimony is considered with seriousness and respect, and that our concerns be reflected in the recommendations for reauthorization by HHS.



LOAD-DATE: May 1, 2002