Strike in a Welfare State

New York City is, among other things, a small welfare state. It carries no less than 500,000 people on its welfare rolls--a number roughly equal to the whole population of Denver-ranging from homeless children to the helpless aged to mothers of large broods with absent and often unknown fathers. To support these people the city spends more than $1,100,000 every day in funds contributed by the federal, state and city governments. A hardy local economy scarcely benefits these chronically poor; instead of decreasing, the list of welfare cases grows by about 200 names a day.

Administering money and various other social remedies to these families is a massive, complex and thankless undertaking for the 12,600 people in the city's Welfare Department. Though most of the 6,000 workers classified as investigators are not trained specifically in social work, the state requires them to be college graduates. They handle a minimum of 60--and as many as 100--cases apiece, and each of these "clients" should ideally be getting weekly attention, an obvious impossibility. "If you try to be conscientious," says one investigator, "you go crazy." Says another, who quit: "Sometimes I was even glad when a client died, because then I had one case less."

Nightmare Landscape. The investigator is expected to process a never-ending mass of forms and applications, interview families to explore their situations and backgrounds, locate errant husbands, head off trouble-bound youngsters, find quarters for those evicted by landlords or tenement fires, worry over tardy or stolen relief checks. In between, he is supposed to provide his clients with whatever social services and counseling he deems necessary to get them off the dole and to keep them and their children from becoming "welfare addicts." Says one welfare-worker: "If I had the time, I could get a third of my cases off relief."

For such efforts, carried on much of the time in a nightmare slum landscape filled with vermin and violence, the pay is poor. The top salary for an investigator with nine years' experience is $7,190 a year--just a little more than a city-employed laborer gets after only one year and only $1,000 more than his top client gets for no work at all. As a result, the Welfare Department is forced to hire untrained and inexperienced hands who never stay around long enough to do much good. Obviously, New York's welfare workers need improved wages and working conditions. But if the improvement is not forthcoming, should they go on strike--against the city and, in effect, against their clients?

City officials generally assume that the social workers' dedication transcends such matters as salary scale. During months of conflict with the city over their grievances, the welfare workers' unions demanded a probably excessive $950 raise in starting salaries, a maximum of $9,000 a year after six years' service, and a reduction in case loads. The city offered a probably niggardly increase of $300 a year and little else. Result: fortnight ago the investigators called a strike.

Highly Unsocial. In the first twelve days, about 7,000 investigators and other welfare workers stayed away from their jobs. The city closed down ten of 25 welfare centers. The remaining centers were crammed with needy people seeking emergency assistance. Those workers who stayed on the job, along with substitutes who were rushed into service, found themselves issuing authorization for funds even though there was no way to check on the legitimacy of the applications. To make matters worse, a New York state law requires dismissal of any employee who strikes against the city. And so, the day after they struck, the welfare workers were legally without jobs.

By last week, despite sporadic huddles between negotiators and politicians, the city and the picketing welfare workers were as far away as ever from a sensible solution. From their ranks in the picket lines, the strikers hurled highly unsocial curses and epithets ("Scab!" "Fink!") at nonstrikers, while some union officers began calling for welfare families to mobilize and march on the centers.

Meanwhile, Welfare Commissioner James R. Dumpson sent out letters with the regular fortnightly relief checks. Since there were no investigators around to make sure that the recipients were still entitled to get the checks, Dumpson lamely reminded those on welfare that they are obligated "to return this check if you are no longer in need of assistance." Apparently every recipient felt entitled; by week's end not one had returned his check.

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