3-14-06, 9:19 am
Two unlikely Global Strike partners, Welfare Warriors of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Laborers Voice of Nazareth, Israel united in street actions on March 8 to protest Wisconsin’s welfare program, W2, which took effect in 1997 in Wisconsin, but invaded Israel in August 2005. In both Wisconsin and Israel mothers are forced to work at private companies and non-profits for no pay in exchange for their families? basic survival income from the government.
Welfare Warriors chose to strike at Maximus, one of Wisconsin’s private W2 administrators, who also run 'The Wisconsin Plan' in Israel. The Warriors protested against W2’s increase in the numbers of mothers working for no pay (workfare) and decrease in women's wages overall as tens of thousands of women take any job for any pay to avoid W2’s mandated unwaged work. Global Strikers exposed the failure and danger of W2 which graduates the majority of its clients – single heads of households – into temporary and part-time jobs, with 81 percent earning wages far below the poverty level.
After spreading its no-wage, low-wage, anti-woman practices around the US, Wisconsin’s welfare program crossed the sea to Israel. Four private corporations, including Maximus, run Israel's 'Wisconsin Plan' which forces mostly Arab moms to work off their 'Family Income Supplement' at 30 hours of unwaged work each week.
On International Women’s day, the Laborers Voice protested again Nazareth’s Wisconsin Plan. Since it began in August 2005, it has already terminated 940 families’ income supplements when mothers were unable to abandon their family responsibilities for 30 hours of unpaid work. (Moms often care for both elders and children.) Parents must leave their children when the youngest is two. No childcare is provided or available. Children often accompany their moms to the 'Wisconsin Center.' Similar to Wisconsin’s W2, the Wisconsin Plan in Nazareth forces women to travel miles away to pick up garbage, clean prisons, or dig potatoes‹all for no pay. In one Kindergarten, the paid cleaning personnel were laid off after the kindergarten requested and received forced 'volunteers' to do the cleaning.
At their March 8 protest the Nazareth moms were also mourning the first fatality under the Wisconsin Plan. Just two days earlier, a 35-year old disabled father of four children became sick while at the Wisconsin Center. He requested medical help or permission to leave. The caseworker told him he could not leave until he had completed his 6 hours of required activities. He died on his way home.
While the 2006 Global Women’s Strike saw women in Wisconsin and Israel struggling to end low wage and no wage work, moms in Venezuela and Argentina were celebrating monumental victories. In recognition of their work in the home, the poorest Venezuelan homemakers, in particular single mothers, will receive a monthly income equal to 80 percent of the minimum wage, or about $180. 100,000 women will be paid in June, and another 100,000 in July. Eventually half a million women will be paid. Homemakers in Argentina will now be eligible for Social Security retirement benefits without having paid into the Social Security fund.
In this new millennium the world is beginning to recognize and value women's hidden contribution to society as caregivers and homemakers. Hurray!
--Pat Gowens is director of Welfare Warriors.
