Workfare's Impact on Workfare Participants

This blog post examines how the policy of Workfare has impacted the lives of Workfare recipients. Workfare recipients in Canada have experienced many instances of not being covered by standard labour codes. These include the inability to join unions, having no rights to minimum wage, not being able to take statutory holidays off, and having no rights to rest periods or vacations. Increased poverty is also an issue with people receiving social assistance and participating in Workfare. Research has shown that social assistance recipients’ income levels are well below the Low Income Cut Offs (LICOs) established by Statistics Canada. In relation to other blogs that discuss the impact of workfare on single mothers, it is also important to note that single parents that were social assistance recipients were deducted for the Child Tax Benefit, which put them even further behind in terms of financial well-being. The amounts provided for most child care subsidies were generally insufficient to cover real costs. Clearly, workfare was ill-prepared to provide an upright working experience for participants.

Cost restraints only enable a very short preparation for the work force. Inadequate training and preparation leaves workfare participants poorly equipped to take on the real work force and handle jobs in the “real world”. Without the training, encouragement, skill, and confidence to take on real jobs in the real work force, workfare participants are not suitably prepared and able to handle “real” work. How are we to argue that workfare really prepares its participants for work when taking the time to properly train them for future work is considered superfluous and redundant?

Although workfare has reduced cost to the government by reducing the number of people receiving social assistance in some provinces, there is a question of what exactly happens to these former social assistance recipients. They may not be “costing” the government social assistance anymore, but many of these people may have turned to homelessness or other types of inadequate living conditions after ceasing to receive social assistance. Is it really helping people to supposedly train and prepare them for real work, then to discontinue their receipt of social assistance, only to leave them struggling to survive? If one looks at the numbers alone, workfare may appear to be useful and even successful, however by taking a more qualitative look at recipients themselves, we can see that workfare doesn’t help as much as it should if it leaves people homeless, skill-less, without confidence and competence, and without motivation.

Speaking to that last point of lack of motivation, it is important to discuss the serious implications of the absence of motivation in workfare participants. To clarify, I am by no means generalizing anyone in any way. There may be many motivated workfare participants who learned valuable skills and gained confidence in their ability to fulfill future work roles. However, again I say that I am not making generalizations, and we cannot make the generalization that workfare works in all instances. If workfare participants are not properly equipped for work, as they ideally should be by workfare practices, they will lack the confidence and motivation to work. This lack of motivation perpetuates people’s negative views of welfare and workfare recipients because it reinforces society’s view that these individuals are not motivated to work. Whether workfare participants are actively looking for work or passively taking what comes to them and living day to day, if motivation is absent quality of work will be absent as well.

Many worries and negative feelings accompany being a welfare recipient or workfare participant. Mirchandani and Chan interviewed social assistance recipients about their feelings about social assistance. Common feelings reported included depression, shame, humiliation, and denigration. Some interesting quotations from recipients about the individuals’ feelings about social assistance included:

“It is a very impersonal process. You go in and you feel like utter crap first of all. It is very demoralizing. I don't care who says, it is very demoralizing to be on social assistance."

“It’s not a life to be on assistance…believe me. Every end of the month my heart is beating. Am I going to get my cheque? Is my cheque going to be suspended and for no reason?”

“There is a lot of not so good things, which are, you know, the harassment, the needing to give up every aspect of your life, every dignified thing that you don’t have to give up in your normal life if you weren't on assistance. Just the way that you are treated as not a human being but as a number”

How does workfare impact workfare participants? Above we looked at how workfare participants lived under the LICO before, during, and after participation in workfare; the denial of things that most workers take for granted such as holidays and having the option to create and/or join a union; the poor quality of job training and preparation offered by workfare; and the lack of motivation of workfare participants. It also doesn’t help that jobs in workfare are usually short-term and often demeaning. It is common knowledge that there is a stigma around receiving social assistance. Welfare recipients are often seen as lazy and a burden to society. Although workfare participants may be considered a step up from this because they are working for welfare assistance, a stigma still exists. This stigma can generate feelings of shame and inadequacy on the part of workfare participants. Shame is another factor that can contribute to lack of motivation in these situations. It is pertinent to recognize the importance of the emotions and self-worth that workfare participants experience because this can have a bearing on their quality of work and their enthusiasm about workfare. As social workers examining workfare from an anti-oppressive lens, we recognize that workfare oppresses and marginalizes workfare participants in many ways, as listed above, and that oppression causes workfare to fail. Maybe if these sources of oppression were ameliorated workfare would prove more successful, but there would be much work to be done.



*Quotes taken from: Mirchandani, K. & Chan, W. (2007). Criminalizing race, criminalizing povery: Welfare fraud enforcement in Canada. Fenwood Publishing: Blackpoint, Nova Scotia.