Unite to Stop W-2!

W-2 ("Wisconsin Works") isn’t welfare reform. It’s Gov. Tommy Thompson’s attempt to create a super-low-wage, captive work force for Wisconsin corporations. It goes hand-in-hand with his plans to contract out state prisoners to private companies. It is racist, sexist, anti-children and anti-labor --- and it must be stopped!

W-2 = slave labor for welfare mothers:

• Everyone now receiving AFDC grants would be forced to take jobs assigned to them by the government. Most AFDC recipients in Wisconsin are single mothers, ages 22 to 34, with one or two kids. Under W-2, mothers with babies as young as 12 weeks old would have to put their kids in day care centers --- with no requirement that these centers be inspected or certified.
• There would be no child care available for children over ten years old.
• There will be no money for education or real job training. Instead, these mothers will be sent to work at social service agencies, working for their grants until they are assigned a job. This isn’t job training, it’s free labor for the agencies.
• The mothers themselves will be stuck for years in low-paying, dead-end jobs. And if jobs are not available in the private sector, they’ll be put to work for the City and County governments for as little as $2.78 an hour!
• While in these jobs, the mothers would not receive the Earned Income Credit or Social Security credits.

W-2 = layoffs & union-busting:

In Wisconsin, about 80,000 people (not counting children) receive AFDC grants. Are there 80,000 jobs available? Last year the Social Development Commission reported that in Milwaukee there is only one job available for every nine people unemployed. So where will these thousands of jobs come from?

It’s not hard to figure out. If private corporations can get a government-supplied worker for minimum wage or less, why should they pay a union wage? And what about the City and County governments? If they can get workers for $2.78 an hour, how long will it take them to lay off hundreds or even thousands of union workers? If we let this happen, what kinds of jobs will be left for our children?

W-2 is not only anti-labor, anti-woman and anti-children, it’s also racist. While only one-third of Wisconsin welfare recipients are African American, who do you think will be assigned the worst jobs? It will be Black women, along with Latinas, Indian and Asian women.

THE ANSWER IS UNITY:

W-2 is part and parcel of the whole right-wing attack coming down on poor and working people today. It can’t be stopped if taken up as an isolated issue. The same government that claims there is no money for poor children can find billions to send our sons and daughters to Bosnia. There’s no money for education, but plenty for prisons. State and federal workers are laid off but more cops are being hired. Congress and the president attack undocumented immigrant workers but say nothing about Ku Klux Klan rallies. The only way to fight back is to build a massive movement that links up all the issues. And that movement must be built first of all on the people most directly affected: poor and working people, especially the communities of color.

W-2 means slave labor for mothers on welfare and union-busting for union workers. Only a massive, united effort can defeat it. We must all join together to STOP W-2!