Unions Protest Pasadena Workfare

Union officials and community activists have challenged Pasadena’s use of General Relief recipients for labor in exchange for receiving welfare checks.

The city in the last two years has began using General Relief recipients to do work ranging from pulling weeds to sodding the turf at the Rose Bowl in exchange for monthly $212 checks from the county. Nationwide, the workfare program of toil for welfare stretches back nearly five decades.

But with workfare’s ranks set to swell amid federal reform that calls for more welfare recipients to labor longer, opponents Monday asked the city to either give such welfare workers full-time jobs or refuse to participate in the program that some labor leaders see as a threat to union jobs.

“This is modern-day slavery,” Guido De Rienzo, a representative of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told the council at Monday’s meeting. “This new law is creating a class of sub-minimal wage workers.”

City employees packed the council chambers in protest of the policy and of an unrelated proposal to cut 100 positions in the city Water and Power Department.

Some council members promised to consider the issue of welfare workers at their May 19 meeting as part of a debate on whether to establish a “livable wage” policy for employees and contractors’ employees.

“I for one am not comfortable paying someone slave labor wages,” said Councilman Paul Little. “But they are going to have to work for someone.”

Able-bodied General Relief recipients currently work 40 hours a month for their $212 monthly checks, earning a little more than minimum wage. The recipients work for 15 cities and a number of other government agencies across the county.