Work Incentive Program Research Articles

Negotiating Labor Market Effects: Descriptive Practice in a Work Incentive Program

By analyzing labor market description and theorizing in everyday life, the author focuses on the ways in which staff and others associated with a Work Incentive Program (WIN) use labor market descriptions to produce quasi‐theories intended to justify their positions on matters of practical concern. The major issue in dispute involved the practical effects on the recessionary area economy for WIN staff and clients. Specifically, should they be held accountable to typical organizational expectations and standards in such an economic environment? This issue is developed by considering the (1) organizational context within which labor market description and negotiations occurred, (2) images of labor markets used by WIN staff and others in justifying their positions, (3) social organization of the negotiations, and (4) ways in which such negotiations sometimes resulted in the reformulation of the “real” issues at stake in staff member interactions with others. The analysis concludes by considering some of the implications of the findings for analyzing labor market description in contemporary organizations.

DEFINING PROPER WORK PERFORMANCE

The article is an analysis of the social organization of complaint-making and -negotiation in a Work Incentive Program. In it I treat complaint-making and -negotiation as ongoing interactional procedures for defining and managing ambiguous and contradictory organizational purposes and goals to which staff members are held accountable. These procedures involved accusing other staff members of acting in improper ways. Through negotiations about such complaints, staff members produced short-term and practical understandings of relevant organizational purposes and goals as well as of proper work performance. The negotiations focused on two issues: whether the choices and actions in questions were (1) consistent with general organizational purposes, and (2) determined by written rules and procedure beyond persons' control. The article concludes by considering some of the implications of the findings for the analysis of complaint-making and -negotiation in contemporary organizations.

Training women on welfare for “High-tech” jobs: Results from a demonstration program

This paper reports the findings from the evaluation of an innovative demonstration program for training female welfare recipients participating in the Work Incentive (WIN) Program as electronic technicians eligible for skilled jobs in private industry. The results indicate that the women completed the training in numbers consistent with expectations based on the performance of non-WIN students, and that the majority of graduates were placed in training-related jobs that paid high enough salaries for achieving independence from the welfare system. Childcare arrangements, transportation to training, personal finances, the client's health, and the children's reactions to their mothers' participation in the training are important factors in the likelihood of the client's completing a program. The initial placement experiences of program graduates reveal other problems which may be characteristic of training programs serving similar target populations, especially problems in paying for the cost of relocation and in replacing public aid services such as health care. Results are interpreted with respect to their implications for the employment problems of low-income, female heads of households as well as state “workfare” programs.

Unemployment As A Dramaturgical Problem: Teaching Impression Management in A Work Incentive Program

This article is an analysis of aspects of everyday life in a Work Incentive Program (WIN). It is intended to apply and extend Adam's (1978) political phenomenology of domination by analyzing inferiorization as a feature of contemporary human service work. The analysis focuses on dramaturgical instruction of unemployed welfare recipients as a process of inferiorization through which clients are cast as disadvantaged in their dealings with area employers. Clients were taught to strategically manipulate impressions of self in order to positively impress area employers and get jobs. The analysis addresses five primary questions: (1) How is the dramaturgical perspective organized as an ideology of inferiorization in WIN and other human service organizations; (2) What was the context within which dramaturgical instruction was defined by the WIN staff as a legitimate response to their clients' problems; (3) What were the assumptions and claims associated with the staff's dramaturgical framing of unemployment; (4) How was the dramaturgical frame used by the staff to identify concrete rules for proper job-seeking: and (5) How did the staff legitimate the perspective and rules associated with it in their interactions with clients?

Expectations & Welfare Work: WIN in New York State

In times of high unemployment it is generally assumed that those without work are in that state because they cannot find work. There is, however, evidence that even during such times menial jobs are available but not taken. In this study of the Work Incentive (WIN) program in New York state, Lawrence Mead finds that employable recipients of welfare benefits are more likely to work if they are expected to do so. He argues that work may have to be treated as a civic duty and enforced if society wants higher employment.

Client Attitude and Organizational Process

The article treats attitude as a folk concept used by staff members in a Work Incentive Program (WIN) to account for and predict the behavior of their clients. Because the staff are unable to observe whether their clients are actually looking for jobs, they use client attitude (as reflected in their demeanor in the office) as an indicator of the clients' probable behavior outside the office. Based on their assessments of client attitude, the staff make and justify decisions having important consequences for their clients' lives. Most of the staff's concern is with detecting and responding to clients with “bad” attitudes who, based either on human weakness or self-interested calculation, are treated as unlikely to fulfill their WIN assignments, particularly looking for jobs. The tests may be used to confirm the staff's initial assessments of client attitude or to develop new ones as well as to identify “appropriate” programs to assign clients. The article concludes by considering the organizational factors associated with the WIN staff's concern for client attitude.

Client Evaluations of WIN and CETA Programs in Arkansas

Public policy analysis has become a major area of interest to political scientists. The government's attempt to create jobs has become an important activity. The purpose of this study is to examine two public service employment programs, the Work Incentive Program (WIN) and the Comprehensive Employment Training Act Program (CETA), as they are administered on the local level. The CETA program was designed to provide training, employment, and other services leading to unsubsidized employment for economically and educationally disadvantaged persons. The WIN program was established with the objective of training employable recipients of AFDC for jobs.

Demographic Profiles on AFDC Mothers Successfully Placed in Competitive Employment

The purposes of this study were to research demographic characteristics of participants in a government work incentive program for AFDC recipients and to identify those characteristics that lead to successful employment through the program. Implications of the results for clients and staff members of work incentive programs are discussed, and limitations of the study are identified.

Holding Clients Accountable: The Micro-Politics of Trouble in a Work Incentive Program

This paper looks at the micro-politics of trouble in one office of the Work Incentive Program, which is intended to help some welfare recipients in the United States find jobs. Clients who fail to cooperate with staff are called to a conciliation session, presented with a formal complaint, informed of the potential consequences of their uncooperativeness, and held accountable for their actions. This paper focuses on how the conciliation sessions are organized, and their implications for staff and client definitions of cooperation, accountability, organizational purpose, and professional identity. I also consider the broader implications of my findings for studying trouble as a feature of all human service institutions. Emerson and Messinger's (1949) approach to the micro-politics of trouble emphasizes the emergence of personal troubles as problematic features of ongoing human relationships. These personal troubles become public problems when institutional officials intervene. Moreover, personal troubles are frequently redefined and reorganized as they become public problems through the interpretations of the officials, the reinterpretations of the disputing parties, and the selection of remedies to the troubles. Emerson (1981) shows how such public problems continue to develop and change based on the efforts of officials to find new, more effective, and acceptable remedies. Those who resist the best efforts of officials may face drastic responses, which are viewed by officials as resorts to be avoided as long as possible. Of the several advantages that this approach offers students of social problems and social control, two are especially important for this paper. First, this approach defines trouble and social control as issues extending beyond the formal, institutional processes associated with labeling persons as deviant; rather, trouble is treated as a potential feature of all human relationships and institutions. A central concern of sociologists of trouble, then, is how persons negotiate and define features of their relationships with others as troublesome and how they deal with these troubles. A second advantage of Emerson and Messinger's (1977) and Emerson's (1981) approach is their focus on the relationship between the selection of remedies and the definition of public problems as a process involving technical and moral (or symbolic) elements. This focus is partly reflected in the process used to select a remedy because a remedy that might be useful in eradicating a condition may also be morally unacceptable except under extreme conditions. The dialectic linking technical and moral elements is also evident in the relationship between the remedy selected (particularly, appeals to last resorts) and the claims to competence and credibility made by professionals and others seeking to define the condition.

Holding Clients Accountable: The Micro-Politics of Trouble in a Work Incentive Program

Holding Clients Accountable: The Micro-Politics of Trouble in a Work Incentive Program

EXPECTATIONS AND WELFARE WORK: WIN IN NEW YORK CITY

Work requirements for welfare recipients have done l i t t l e to reduce the welfare rolls. The usual explanation that limited skills and openings prevent recipients working is unpersuasive, since low‐skilled work seems to be quite widely available. This study of the Work Incentive (WIN) program, the main welfare work program, in New York City found that whether recipients work depends mainly on whether WIN seriously expects them to. Thus, the welfare work problem is more political than economic.It lies in our reluctance to obligate recipients to function socially as we would other people.

Local Win Program Managers as Constrained Entrepreneurs

The Work Incentive Program grew out of the social reform movement to implement occupational rehabilitation. Its original, centralized philosophy was to promote self-sufficiency through job training and support services. However, the program has shifted toward decentralization, relying more on quantifiable local results. Local managers find themselves directed primarily by how many clients get unsubsidized jobs. Distinction is made between direct placements and those who enter employment on their own. A longitudinal effort shows that success is strongly dependent on local economic conditions; however, a cross-sectional effort shows the importance of the racial composition of the unemployed client pool in determining placement. Local management policy variables are significant in success as measured by numbers who entered employment.

Reforming Welfare: Lessons from the WIN Experience

shift in national priorities during 1980 toward increased defense spending and a balanced budget had a chilling effect on new human services initiatives and funding levels for existing domestic programs. One of the initiatives relegated to the back burner by the changing priorities was the Carter administration's welfare reform proposal. Welfare reform is a hardy perennial, however. It seems certain to bloom again, particularly since President Reagan, like his predecessor, has long advocated altering welfare policy. During the campaign, candidate Reagan repeatedly asserted that, The greatest social program . . . is a job.' Any welfare reform to emerge during his administration is likely to have a strong emphasis on putting able-bodied welfare recipients to work. This article presents research findings on the existing federal program intended to do just that. program is WIN, the Work Incentive Program, which has been operating since 1967. Understanding how it functions and, particularly, what factors affect its productivity should be important to welfare reform planners and future administrators. WIN is jointly administered by the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services at the federal level and by employment security agencies and welfare departments at the state and local levels. Its objective is to move recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) into productive jobs, thereby increasing their economic self-sufficiency while reducing welfare rolls and costs. Two different kinds of services are provided to meet this objective-social services and employment services. Thus, linkages have been developed between employment and welfare/social service agencies at all levels of program administration-national, regional, state and local. AFDC recipients who are determined to be employable are required to participate in WIN under threat of decreased benefits. only recipients exempted are the aged, the incapacitated, and those who live in remote areas or are needed at home to care for children under six years of age or an ill family member. Those who are exempt from mandatory registration are encouraged to participate voluntarily. emphasis is on finding people regular, unsubsidized jobs in the private sector. WIN has little money for subsidized jobs or training. similarities between WIN and welfare reform proposals currently under discussion are striking. These proposals generally involve similar objectives, mandatory participation requirements, and service strategies much like WIN's. * This article examines the employment-related aspects of welfare reform in light of recent research findings on the implementation of the Work Incentive (WIN) program, the current welfare-employment program. authors contend that nine lessons can be learned from the WIN research that should be applied to the future design and development of welfareemployment programs, whether or not welfare reform legislation is enacted. lessons are summarized as follows:

Lessons from WIN: A Manpower Evaluation

The Work Incentive (WIN) program provides employment, training, and supportive services to welfare recipients. In this paper, the WIN program is evaluated on the basis of: (1) its average net impact on participant earnings and welfare dependency; (2) its relative impact on providing specific services (e.g., OJT, classroom training) to participants with varying work histories; and (3) its average and relative cost effectiveness. It is concluded that WIN has been very effective in serving welfare recipients who have poor work histories, despite the modest average gain observed for the program as a whole; subsidized public employment is singled out as a particularly effective tool for increasing the employment and earnings of welfare recipients.

The Impact of the WIN 2 Program on Welfare Costs and Recipient Rates

This paper presents an econometric analysis of the impact of the Work Incentive Program, as modified by the Talmadge Amendments of 1971 (WIN 2), on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program costs and recipient rates. Evidence is presented that suggests that the impact of a WIN 2 placement depends upon the mix of services that the program participant receives.

Rural WIN‐ings

This article explores the experiences of two Work Incentive Program (Win) staff members in delivering employment‐related services in a rural Win program. It deals with three prevalent rural obstacles to employment: transportation, flexibility with individual cases, and sex barriers. While disputing the theory that rural areas offer few employment possibilities for Win clients, we point out that, with flexibility and creativity, rural areas are productive in helping Win clients become self‐supporting.

Profits in Programs? A Modest Proposal for Welfare Employment

In one important respect, the Work Incentive (WIN) program is typical of other manpower training efforts and of many government service programs: it is a failure. It was begun in 1968 as a major effort to restore relief recipients to economic independence and thereby cut the cost of burgeoning welfare rolls.1 In pursuit of these objectives, the program attempts to provide its clients with education, vocational training, and supportive services such as child care and counseling. The results have been disappointing. While in the program, clients spend much of their time in a holding status, waiting for a place in a training program, waiting for counseling, waiting for placement, waiting for something to happen. Many drop out, and those who complete the program have little success in obtaining and retaining employment.

Success and Failure in the Work Incentive Program

Success and Failure in the Work Incentive Program

Empirical Studies of Welfare Dependency: A Survey

In the following article, 52 empirical studies of welfare recipients are surveyed. The object of the survey is to compare empirical evidence with the assumptions of current welfare reform proposals. Discovering a large gap between policy assumptions and research findings, the survey concludes with suggestions for both. Following the lead of their fellow taxpayers, social scientists have devoted increasing amounts of time and effort to the study of poverty and dependency; discussions of marginal tax rates, motivation, work incentives, and general welfare reform are now common in the journals of sociology and economics. Despite this extensive and growing interest in these problems, relatively little in the way of hard data has appeared in professional journals; most discussions continue to reflect the casual empiricism and bias of the authors. While one might conclude from this state of affairs that little empirical work has been done, this is not the case. On the contrary, federal agencies, especially the Manpower Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor, have funded a large number of research projects which bear directly on these issues. The results of these projects and other studies provide considerable insight into the dynamics of impoverishment and the potential of public assistance programs. Unfortunately, the limited exposure of these studies has made their results inaccessible to all but a handfull of social scientists. This brief survey attempts to help close the communications gap. In the following section, the results of 52 empirical studies are surThe author is Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Maryland. * Support for this study was received from the U.S. Department of Labor; all opinions are those of the author. An earlier version of this paper, entitled Facts and Fictions of Welfare Reform, was released by the Department of Labor. The Journal of Human Resources * VIII * Supplement This content downloaded from 157.55.39.60 on Mon, 18 Jul 2016 04:11:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 20 1 THE JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCES veyed. For organizational and analytical purposes, these results are discussed in the context of welfare reform. In particular, I first attempt to identify the major assumptions of current and pending welfare reform (for example, the Work Incentive Program [WIN], the Talmadge Amendments, President Nixon's reform bill [H.R. 1], and Senator Long's proposed Guaranteed Job Opportunity Program) and then subject these assumptions to empirical scrutiny.' THE ASSUMPTIONS OF REFORM A. The Distinction Between Working and Nonworking Poor At the core of much welfare reform is the persistent distinction between poor and nonworking poor. President Nixon's proposal (H.R. 1) is the most explicit in this regard, actually creating separate programs (OFP and FAP) to serve each target population. Senator Long's bill includes the same categorizations, while the present system of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) explicitly excludes poor families headed by working fathers [40].2 The distinction drawn is based on the assumption that a poor person's employment status is stable over a considerable period of time. Unfortunately, there is little empirical justification for such a categorization. On the contrary, numerous studies and even official program statistics indicate that (1) there is a high degree of mobility between employment and dependency status, and (2) simultaneous work and welfare status is common. With regard to status mobility, AFDC program statistics [52] indicate that the median time on welfare is only 20 months. Longitudinal and retrospective studies of these recipients show that both before and after receiving public assistance, families are in the labor force [11, 22, 30, 32, 37, 46]. Similarly, studies of the working poor have demonstrated that substantial numbers (estimates run over 25 percent) of poor persons now working re1 It should be noted at the outset that the studies synthesized here are remarkably consistent in their findings and of generally high research quality. Hence, the usual caveats about the tentativeness of conclusions are omitted; only in a few places have I found it necessary to point out that available evidence is scarce. 2 The AFDC program is the existing mechanism for public assistance to families with children (currently about 11 million recipients), while the AFDC-U program serves families with unemployed fathers (approximately 660,000 recipients). The WIN program is the adjunct manpower training program for adult AFDC and AFDC-U recipients. The Talmadge Amendments (effective July 1, 1972) expand the WIN program and increase related work requirments. H.R. 1 is the Nixon Administration's (revised) welfare reform package, which would extend aid to the working poor. For more detail see [38, 48]. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.60 on Mon, 18 Jul 2016 04:11:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

AFDC Mothers View the Work Incentive Program

Although they felt some pressure to participate, most of the AFDC mothers studied viewed the Work Incentive Program as an opportunity for self-advancement. Consistent with the findings of other studies and with WIN statistics, few of these women obtained jobs through the program. This study documents an infrequently considered consequence of WIN's failure to deliver jobs-the frustration of the women's own aspirations.