Chapter IV

A. The Work Incentive Program (WIN)

The WIN program is the first manpower program for which the ES was given primary responsibility. Under it, the ES must perform the full range of job-related services that are now considered essential to manpower programs for the disadvantaged and that are being proposed as part of the welfare reform proposals. A review of ES performance under WIN illustrates the service's chief deficiencies and affords a basis for assessing its capability to handle expanded responsibilities.

WIN requires the ES to work with selected welfare recipients in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children category (AFDC). The ES must develop an employability plan for each enrollee including, as needed, basic education, counseling, training, work experience, health screening, and follow-up support all designed to prepare him for a job that will take him off the welfare rolls.

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In the two full years the WIN program has been in operation, it has handled only a small percentage of the eligible AFDC population, substantially fewer than the slots allocated for the program. From the beginning, the services provided under the program have been fragmented, inhibiting its effectiveness. The enrollment process, which depends on state welfare offices for referrals and the initial determination of suitability, is complicated. Essential components of the program have been delayed or lacking altogether and, most serious of all, the ES simply hasn't been able to find or develop the jobs.1/

The most favorable estimates indicate that only 20% of the participants get jobs and many of these placements are insufficient to insure removal from the welfare rolls for any substantial period of time. The Labor Department estimated, in early 1971, that 20% were dropping out for "no good reason", and 60% were dropping out for programmatic failures --lack of day care, no available training slots, etc. and for personal reasons, such as illness or death.

The cost of the program has been extremely high. According to Assistant Secretary Lovell, the cost per successful enrollee in the WIN program over an estimated period of one year, is $4,000, a low expenditure he claims, "to get somebody into the work force in a permanent fashion."2/ But the Department has no follow-up information to show how many WIN placements have resulted in "permanent" removal from the welfare rolls.

In the 1970 hearings on the FAP legislation, Senator Russell Long summed up performance under WIN as follows:

"The accomplishments of the Department of
Labor in administering the WIN program are
dismal. Of the 250,000 welfare recipients
found appropriate and referred to the work
incentive program during its first 21 months,
less than 60% were enrolled in the program,
and out of the 145,000 who were enrolled,
one-third subsequently dropped out. Only
13,000 welfare cases have been closed fol-
lowing participation in the work incentive
program during its first 21 months, while
during the same period, 641,000 families were
added to the welfare rolls a ratio of 50
to 1 on the unfavorable side." (FAP Hear-
ings, Sen Finance Comm., Aug. 4, 1970, p.
763-764.)

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The Senator went on to say that the enabling legislation included ample authority to develop training programs designed to meet individual recipients' needs. "It is not in the legislation, but in its administration that the program has failed. Even the unimpressive enrollment figures of the DOL are inflated; after one year of operation 19,000 enrollees, or 28.2%, were in an inactive "holding" position because of scheduling failures by the administrators of the program. Appendix B gives a breakdown of performance under the WIN program as of December 1970, for each state surveyed.

The most comprehensive analysis available of ES performance under the WIN program comes from a March 1970 assessment conducted in 23 cities by the Auerbach Corporation for the Labor Department. That report highlights a number of serious deficiencies in the program:

--despite the legislative provisions for medical
examinations, no health care follow-up is pro-
vided to correct even those deficiencies, such
as lack of eye glasses or dentures, which hinder
work;

--transportation allowances are inadequate to
get welfare participants to job interviews or
training sessions;

--the division of responsibility between HEW
and DOL for the various kinds of support pay-
ments due recipients leads to confusion and
delay;

--staffing is inadequate; individuals illequipped to handle the disadvantaged are given key positions;

--the "team concept" mandated by the DOL has not
materialized. Not only are manpower specialists
excluded from the team operation, crippling job
development functions, but "coaches" (the com-
munity contacts) are not given an active role
in the development of employability plans. These
staff deficiencies result frequently in errone-
ous decisions about enrollees and less than
adequate services;

--as far as female participants are concerned,
the major failing of the program is the lack of
child care facilities. HEW guidelines require
such facilities, but fail to indicate how they
are to be provided. This prevents many enrollees
from active participation and results in repeated
interruptions once the program is underway;

--overall, the program suffers from a lack of
adequate education and training opportunities,
particularly on-the-job training3/;

--like other ES programs, the WIN staff has been
deluged with paperwork, duplicative reports

and redundant forms which "sometimes obscured
the real substance of WIN."

Participants' complaints reflected similar failings: a woman from St. Louis complained that after completing training, WIN told her she had to find her own position; in California, a man who was trained as a welder was told just before completion of training that there were no jobs available and he should reapply for welfare; also in California, two enrollees in their mid-40's were told after a year of "holding" that they were too old for training; and in Kansas, applicants were told they couldn't be referred to WIN unless they were currently working.

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Important as these problems are, they pale in comparison with the basic failing of the WIN program - its inability to find jobs for the enrollees:

"The purpose of the Work Incentive Program
is to place persons in employment which can
enhance their lives, and substantially reduce
their welfare payments. The program must ul-
timately be judged on the basis of the number
of persons placed, and the quality of jobs in
which they are placed. Despite this, less
attention has been given to the obtaining of
good positions than to most other areas of
the program . . . Statistics to date show that
14.3% of all enrollees have dropped out."
(Auerbach Report, P. C-34-C-35.)

ES and Labor Department officials rationalize that the program is successful despite its low placement record, on the theory that participants benefit intangibly from whatever counseling and training they do receive. It is just as likely, however, that the frustration of being processed and interviewed and taught, with no result, is discouraging and harmful to the participant's self-respect and his attitude toward the possibility of self-improvement.

The Auerbach Report went on to fault DOL guidelines for failing to focus on the need to assess closely the characteristics of the welfare recipients participating in WIN, and to review public and private job-market data before initiating the program:

"WIN guidelines, regulations and state plans
are usually weak on the subject of available
jobs. . . . there is little indication that
the critical problem with the program may be
not component services (orientation, counsel-
ing, etc.) but rather the availability of
suitable employment.

"It is difficult, im many programs, to find
any evidence of detailed plans being made for
placement of applicants, even now that the WIN
program is well along. The position held by
most programs seems to be to take a wait-and-
see attitude and deal with problem on a case-
by-case basis. Many WIN job developers express
great apprehension about what can be done with
applicants once they have come out of training