A Day's Work, A Day's Pay

A Day's Work, A Day's Pay. 57 minutes. 2001. Mint Leaf Productions. New Day Films, 22-D Hollywood Avenue, Hohokus, NJ 07423. Rental: $60.00. Purchase: $240.00.

In their classic text, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (1971), Piven and Cloward demonstrate that social welfare policy in the United States functions to control the labor market; expanding the welfare rolls during economic downturns to quell social unrest, and contracting them to force workers into the labor market in times of economic stability. Their theoretical frameworks are dramatically illustrated in Skurnik and Leichter's documentary A Day's Work, A Day's Pay. Skurnik and Leichter follow three welfare recipients in New York City, home of the nation's largest welfare population, as they resist injustice in the Work Experience Program (WEP), and develop into effective community organizers and social activists.

WEP, New York City's workfare program, was instituted in conjunction with the 1996 Federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act. The program compels welfare recipients to accept menial jobs cleaning toilets, sweeping streets, and picking up garbage in city parks and other public places in exchange for their monthly benefits. As second-class workers, WEP employees work for lower wages and without the workplace protections extended to fellow workers.

The documentary focuses on Juan Galan, a Puerto Rican-American man in his mid-twenties, Jackie Marte, a 23-year-old Dominican immigrant and single mother of two, and Jose Nicolau, a Puerto Rican man in his late forties. Through their experiences as WEP workers, Galan and Nicolau are inspired to activism in Association of Community Organizations...