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Why slave labor workfare now?

The US bosses along with the rest of the capitalist world are in a desperate crisis. Economic competition is intensifying worldwide forcing the bosses to cut costs and produce more. The result is a falling rate of profit. They are in a desperate battle with Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian, and other bosses for control of resources and markets. Ultimately this fierce worldwide capitalist competition can only be settled as imperialist rivalry has been decided in the past – by war. The U.S. ruling class must institute fascism as a way to discipline the working class. They will set us up to march off as cannon fodder and fight other workers so that one or another set of bosses can come out on top. Workfare slave labor is one more fascist weapon in the bosses' arsenal to prepare us for a war to save their profit system.

To succeed in this worldwide competition, the US bosses must squeeze the working class to the wall. To secure maximum profits and beat off all competitors, the bosses must inevitably drag down the workers' standard of living, depressing wages and eliminating benefits any way they can. That's why Clinton has said that we must “reconcile ourselves … to having a higher percentage of people at lower wage levels.” (Rolling Stone Magazine, September 1992).

Under capitalism, all workers are wage slaves. We are all just a paycheck or two away from being homeless. Capitalism is based on wage slavery. We workers create all value but the bosses steal most of it in the form of profits. The only way we can abolish this wage slavery is by abolishing the wage system itself – which means destroying capitalism and all bosses. Only communism can accomplish that. Only communism – workers in control – can improve workers' lives.

Bosses welfare cuts drive down

all workers wages

The bosses are creating an army of unemployed starving workers who will be desperate to work at any wage. The boss can then lower wages for employed workers by saying, “Either you accept these cuts or you're out on the street. There are hundreds who would work for me at that wage.”

The bosses are creating four new divisions in their army of unemployed to use as a club to drive down the wages for the whole working class.

Division 1: Workers cut off welfare completely. Millions of workers will be cut from welfare roles when the new Clinton welfare law goes into effect. This law tells states they must kick 25% of families off welfare next year, 35% by 1999, and 50% by the year 2002 in order to receive welfare grants. In addition there will be no public assistance for families without a minor child, and no assistance at all after being on welfare for five years, whether or not you have a job.

Division 2: Documented (“legal”) and undocumented immigrants. The new Clinton immigration and welfare laws will cut Social Security, SSI disability benefits, and food stamps for documented and undocumented immigrants. These workers will also be subjected to arbitrary deportation. In California alone, 410,000 legal immigrants will lose food stamps and 230,000 blind, elderly and disabled will lose SSI, their sole income. All immigrants (except those with refugee status or those already working for 10 years) will be cut off from public assistance as of January 1, 1997. These desperate immigrant workers can then be used as another club to threaten employed workers and force them to accept still lower wages.

Division 3: Prison Labor. The bosses' criminal injustice system has created over one million potential prison laborers. They can be used as contract labor at wages as low as twenty cents an hour. Thirty-six states are now using prison slave labor, producing anything from Annie Sez clothing in Oregon to acting as TWA telephone agents in Arizona.

Division 4: Workfare. The bosses are forcing the over two million workers who remain on welfare into slave labor jobs, making them work off their welfare checks and food stamps at anywhere from 79 cents an hour in Mississippi to $3.12 an hour in New York City; all well below even the puny federal minimum wage. These workfare workers replace union-scale jobs at one-fifth the pay! If they refuse, they starve outright.

Workfare slave labor is here now

Workfare fascism is not a future program. It's well under way. Over 40,000 are already in these slave labor jobs in New York City alone, with 100,000 more slated by 1997. They are cleaning parks, streets, offices and hospitals, and processing paper work. That's 100,000 jobs that used to be paid at a rate three to five times the amount received by workfare workers.

The NYC Dept. of Social Services lost 5,000 full-time jobs and added over 2,000 slave laborers. Certain titles are no longer filled. The bosses just hire workfare workers. Sanitation lost at least 1,500 jobs since 1993 while adding 4,000 part-time slave laborers. The Parks department dropped 760 full-time jobs but uses about 5,400 part-time slave laborers.

Beyond New York, in the shadow of the White House, more than 20,000 Washington women on welfare are being forced into workfare, while that city loses 10,000 regular jobs annually. In Michigan, one-third of the work-force in Wayne County Social Service offices are unemployed workers working for their welfare checks. In San Francisco, workers on welfare have been cleaning buses for years.

Workfare slave labor jobs will become the future jobs for our youth, whether imprisoned in the regular jails or in the workplace concentration camp of workfare. It all adds up to Auschwitz, USA.

Union leaders – wardens of

slave labor workfare.

Union leaders have endorsed the bosses' slave labor workfare. These traitors, lieutenants of the capitalist class, are trying to deliver the working class into the arms of fascism in the name of saving jobs. Supporting workfare will not provide job security. There can be no job security under capitalism. Economic crisis, mass unemployment and racism are built into the bosses' profit system. The bosses proclaim that a healthy economy, that is healthy for them, requires at least 6% unemployment. In the U.S. that's eight million out of work; and the actual figure is more than twice that.

These union traitors turn job security into its opposite. They use it to depress wages to the lowest possible level, which in turn is used as a threat to all those earning above that level to bring them down also. They disarm workers from rebelling, from turning to revolutionary communism. Thus, in the world according to Clinton, the AFL-CIO and their Wall Street masters, fascism – job security via workfare – is good.

For example, the New York City Local of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) recently signed a union contract with the Transit Authority (TA) allowing the TA bosses to use thousands of workfare workers to clean subways and buses to work off their welfare checks and food stamps. The TWU agreed to let the next 586 cleaning jobs go by attrition, in exchange for a no layoff clause – but no layoffs only for the life of this contract. Even then, a letter dated September 18 from the union to the TA implies that in the event of a “financial emergency,” all bets are off. Layoffs could come even during this contract. On top of all that, Point 9 of the agreement says: "The aggregate number of WEP participants that may be utilized is not subject to limitation." The TA bosses boast that this fascist contract will save them $100 million.

An individual welfare recipient cleaning these NY subways receives in welfare what works out to $81.25 per week. Forced to work off that amount for 26 hours a week, his or her hourly wage is $3.12. The union rate for those 586 jobs is $16.62 an hour, more than five times the slave labor wage! And that doesn't include the cost of benefits a TWU cleaner receives. Workfare workers get NO benefits. It's not har

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