Portland, OR
The recently enacted federal welfare reform legislation poses several significant challenges to AFL-CIO affiliates whose members work in the administration, enforcement and delivery of services to welfare recipients and to AFL-CIO affiliates whose members will be working side-by-side with workfare recipients who are placed in public or private jobs.
First, affiliates need to preserve their representational rights and the bargained-for standards protecting represented employees when they are confronted by threats of contracting out or privatizing public services that arise from the elimination of previous requirements that welfare be administered by public employees under a merit system.
Second, affiliates need to ensure that the placement of workfare recipients into public or private jobs does not displace union members or erode union-negotiated wages and working conditions and create a "musical chairs" situation in which displaced workers themselves are forced onto welfare.
In dealing with the new legal and political climate posed by the federal welfare reform legislation, the goals of the AFL-CIO are to protect existing collective bargaining and work relationships and to extend the benefits of union representation to workfare recipients who are placed in public or private jobs. To further these objectives, the Executive Council declares that it is the policy of the AFL-CIO to:
1. Preserve Established Collective Bargaining and Work Relationships.
Where an affiliate is faced with the threat of contracting out or privatizing its work in welfare administration, the AFL-CIO will support and encourage the affiliate to follow the work and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with successor employers.
2. Organize Workfare Recipients.
Where workfare recipients are assigned to work that is identical or similar to work performed at a worksite where an affiliate has an established collective bargaining or work relationship, the AFL-CIO will support and encourage the affiliate to organize the recipients. At worksites where no established relationships exist, affiliates seeking to organize workfare recipients will be encouraged to do so.