The Uncertain Hour

Since the 1990s, most cash welfare recipients have been required to get a job or do mandated “work activities” to receive their monthly check. These requirements are intended to help parents who are struggling financially into jobs that will help keep them out of poverty and off government benefits. But is the work requirement system meeting either of those goals?

According to our analysis of data from Wisconsin, an average of nearly 70% of employed welfare participants worked at temp companies. These companies put people to work in other companies, trying to fill temporary jobs where the work is often grueling and the pay low. 

Welfare-to-work has been so good for temp agencies that some of them actively lobby for more work requirements for government benefits through campaign contributions and white papers. “It gives us a pool of more people we can help,” said the CEO of one temp company whose franchises have ranked among the top 10 employers of Wisconsin welfare participants. “A person loses self-esteem when they don’t go back to work. Whether it’s voluntary or involuntary work is very important for their psyche.”

On this episode, host Krissy Clark looks at the cozy relationship between for-profit welfare companies and temp companies desperate to put people to work in some of the country’s most precarious jobs. Plus, a frank discussion with an architect of our modern welfare-to-work system, former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Antoine Dukes is a natural born salesman. And when he started working for a for-profit welfare company, he figured it was a good way to put his skills to work helping needy Americans find jobs that would get them back on their feet.

But when he tried to avoid sending people to minimum wage jobs, something happened that made him realize that these welfare companies are rewarded with taxpayer dollars for getting welfare recipients into just about any job, even if the job would not support their family and would leave them still needing government help to make ends meet. 

In this episode, host Krissy Cark sheds light on this opaque business model — and has a frank conversation with the founder of America Works, one of the first for-profit welfare-to-work companies in the country. 

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In 1961, city officials in Newburgh, New York, declared war on their poorest residents by proclaiming, without evidence, that the city was overrun by welfare cheats. It was a moment in history when the belief that certain people need to be forced to work gained influence in our country’s system to help poor people.

Officials led by City Manager Joseph Mitchell launched a campaign of harsh crackdowns on welfare recipients that included surprise police interrogations, rigid eligibility restrictions and forcing able-bodied men to work to receive a welfare check. But were these new rules designed to reduce welfare fraud or to target members of the city’s Black community? 

After a national controversy erupted over Newburgh’s welfare rules, the city found  itself at the center of a fight over welfare policy that’s still playing out today.

Producer Peter Balonon-Rosen takes us back to Newburgh to tell the story of its war on welfare and how race became central in a battle over welfare policy.

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In the 1950s, a rumor that people were moving to Newburgh, NY to live off welfare riled up the city. When city leaders essentially declare war on welfare — and the people who get it — things tumble out of control.

Plus, how national suspicions grew about people getting welfare right as more black people started gaining more access to welfare benefits.

Host Krissy Clark and producer Peter Balonon-Rosen go back in history to tell a surprising origin story of part of our welfare system — and take a magnifying glass to how our country determines who deserves help and who doesn’t.

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