MPR: Getting a Job

Getting a Job
By Dan Gunderson
October 12, 1998

Part of the MPR Welfare to Work Series

The Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) is designed to get welfare recipients a job. The state says it's working. Nearly 25 percent of people on welfare at the beginning of this year are now employed. But critics say forcing people to take low-paying jobs is a political, not social solution.

VILMA MARTINEZ THOUGHT SHE HAD A FULL-TIME JOB raising five boys. For 10 years she was out of the workforce. Then came welfare reform. Vilma says she needs two jobs to make ends meet.

Martinez: I'm not getting money grants. I'm not getting food stamps. I'm just getting medical assistance and a little help with daycare.

Vilma misses the food stamps - feeding five boys is expensive. She earns a little more than the minimum wage. The average wage for the more than 11,000 Minnesotans who have moved from welfare to work is just over $7 an hour.

Because of the strong economy, workers are scarce and many employers are eager to give welfare recipients a chance.

Fargo-Moorhead-based Scheel's Sporting Goods has hired several people from the welfare rolls. Company CEO Steve Scheel says giving those people jobs has little to do with charity.

Scheel: Because of the economy, employers in this town are paying above minimum wage to get people if they think the person will bring something to the company. We are not hiring these people because we feel sorry for them. We're hiring them because we think they will bring something to our community.

Scheel says workers start near minimum wage. He says he realizes that's not enough to support a family, but he says someone who works hard could be earning $9 an hour within a year.

Duke Schemmp directs the People Escaping Poverty Project in Moorhead. He supports the idea of putting people to work, but worries as soon as they get a job they will be considered a success and forgotten.

Schemmp says welfare recipients have complained to him they want to pursue a career, but are told they must take the first job available and not wait for the one they want.

Schemmp: The change in the whole emphasis on work being the success is so narrow minded. It's so narrow. It needs to be a broader focus. We need to figure out how to get people out of poverty, and how do we give people enough opportunity and training so they can move out of those lower-wage jobs and really succeed?

Joe Peterson says that should be a natural progression. Peterson supervises social workers in Clay County. He says Federal Welfare Reform has put pressure on states to get people working. States can lose federal funding if they don't show a reduction in welfare caseloads. Peterson says it's important to remember the first job is a stepping stone to something better.

Peterson: We don't expect the first job our clients get will make them self-sufficient. That would be really unrealistic. But building that base - building good work habits, punctuality, getting along with co-workers, and a solid work history - is going to make it much easier to get promoted to the next job.

But MFIP clients like Vilma Martinez wonder if there is a good-paying job in their future, or just an endless succession of jobs that don't pay the bills. And Vilma worries about failing at her other job - parenting.

Martinez: Now that I work I feel a whole lot better. I feel really proud, and I know my kids do, too. But then you stop and think if it's really worth it, 'cause of your kids. You're losing time you had with them. I think that really affected my boys when I went back to work.

Harvey Stallwick says Vilma's dilemma raises an important question.

Stallwick: What is the working mother thinking about when she's on that fairly demeaning job? "I'm demeaned as a worker. I'm also being demeaned as a mother." I think those are very legitimate questions.

Harvey Stallwick heads the Social Work Department at Concordia College in Moorhead. He says Minnesota has done a good job of providing supports like daycare and transportation that help get people working. But he questions the effects on children. Stallwick says the early evidence shows a disturbing downside to the welfare-to-work movement.

Stallwick: I'm talking about parenting. I'm talking about the effect on children. I'm talking about the increase in mental illness and emotional disturbance and other delaying characteristics that are beginning to show up in children who are being raised by very tired, single parents.

Stallwick hopes politicians will see MFIP as a good first step. But he says only time will tell if it promotes social justice or creates an underclass living in perennial poverty.

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