Do Legal Services Need to Change to Accommodate the Working Poor?

Do Legal Services Need to Change to Accommodate the Working Poor? By Don Saunders Don Saunders is director of civil legal services, National Legal Aid and Defender Association, 1625 K St. NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20006; 202.452.0620; d.saunders@nlada.org. One of the most meaningful events we sponsor at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association is our annual Substantive Law Conference. Those of us who work on this conference receive regular reminders of why we are lucky to be a part of the civil legal services community. The chance to discuss substance and strategy with a wide array of young, energetic, highly creative and committed advocates reassures us about the health and future of what we old-timers, in typical sixties mode, still consider a movement. The younger lawyers and paralegals are highly optimistic about their work and their ability to make a positive contribution to the lives of the clients they serve in spite of the endless stream of political attacks they face. I vividly recall a keynote address delivered by Ramon Arias, director of Bay Area Legal Aid in Oakland, California, at this conference several years ago. Arias spoke to a packed room shortly after the Gingrich crowd had succeeded in applying another round of reprehensible limitations on advocacy funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). These restrictions were coupled with what many in our community viewed as the horrific Clinton capitulation on the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. 1 Many viewed the welfare reform restriction on LSC programs as an assurance that the legal aid community was not allowed to use a Goldberg v. Kelly type strategy to protect welfare recipients. 2 Many bemoaned the end of legal services as we had known it an effective tool to address the needs of people living in poverty. Arias strongly challenged that world view. While recognizing the tremendous work that had gone before his entry into legal services (and the concomitant importance for all of us to understand that heritage), he also recognized the ability of his generation to work within a changed environment, both legal and political. He noted how he and his colleagues had developed creative legal strategies within the framework of current conditions. He dismissed reflections about various good old days scenarios that somehow lessened the importance of his work or his beliefs. Arias urged the newer advocates to adopt the same approach he did what I view as the essence of good lawyering. Rather than bemoaning the inequities facing our programs and poor people in this country, we should use our skills strategically to 1 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-93, 110 Stat. 2105. 2 Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970) (Clearinghouse No. 1799). 630 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001

accomplish positive outcomes for our clients and their families. Thinking Differently Since then, many in our community have heeded the call to think differently about our work and the goals and aspirations of our client communities. I am pleased to see that in this special issue of CLEARING- HOUSE REVIEW some of our leading advocates explore the latest strategic thinking about representation in the current political and legal climate. This special issue offers a comprehensive overview of an approach to our advocacy that is significantly different from that which I think continues to exist in many programs. As a young lawyer in the South, I cut my teeth on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and other benefits advocacy. The remaining vestiges of racism and poverty had left many families in abject poverty. We organized our advocacy, I think correctly, around ensuring that the government of the richest country on the planet provide at least a modicum of support for the poorest among us. We based these strategies on two basic premises that may still apply today: (1) that government-agency advocacy designed to achieve universal and lasting benefits was a realistic goal and (2) that to expect that our nation s basic premise of equality of law and economic opportunity applied to many of our clients was not realistic. We often talked about strategies to open meaningful employment opportunities to help families rise out of dependency on benefits programs. However, most of our energy was devoted to ensuring that these benefits were maintained. We organized our impact efforts through task forces designed to maximize change within a very specialized program: benefits or AFDC, housing, health, social security, etc. This intense specialization led to the development of a high degree of expertise that resulted in many instances of successful advocacy. Yet this same specialization made it difficult to take a more comprehensive view of strategies across specialty lines that might more effectively move a family out of poverty and dependence on a particular government program. More recently, the shift of paradigms necessitated by welfare reform has led many programs to broaden their thinking about their advocacy. Others have not been as willing to change old ways of organizing and performing their work. Much of our attitude has been driven by an inherent suspicion about whether our political leaders seriously care about a level playing field for all people living in this country whether they be H2A farmworkers picking our crops or teen moms lacking basic working skills. As a community, then, we should never lose our focus as a community on ensuring that a real safety net exists to protect our most vulnerable people. Yet, if we give credence to the goals of welfare reform, however insincerely promoted, and develop strategies designed to pursue our clients own definition of meaningful work and income, we not only develop advocacy strategies attuned to the realities of the day; we also develop a program of initiatives designed to empower our clients and strengthen their communities. Using this approach, a number of significant successes, many of them outlined in this REVIEW, have been achieved across the country. I believe that a number of programs must change to accommodate the needs of the working poor. First, our community must think of our practice in a new way it needs to recognize that many more of our clients are engaged in some form of work. This may mean a change in priorities, specialties, or just basic world views. For example, there is nothing inherently less worthy about representing consumers with rights as such. Programs may need to focus on issues or clients who do not fit prior molds. Partnerships and collaborations with new groups, such as labor unions and job training providers, are important in achieving meaningful results. Cultural, linguistic, and diversity issues, particularly as they play out in the work force, need to be rethought in many programs. In the South, for example, there are places that have, for generations, dealt with a black-white paradigm that has defined many of the issues for legal services advocacy and client com- JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY 631

munities for years. All of a sudden, large new Latino populations are showing up in these communities usually because of work and the aspirations these workers bring to these communities. In some programs, little attention is paid to these new arrivals. The latest Substantive Law Conference presented a very interesting track patterned after a Greater Boston Legal Services initiative directed toward a Chinese community in Boston on representing culturally diverse communities. A number of specific skills and substantive strategies discussed in this session hold great promise for programs changing to address these new challenges. The substantive experts writing in this REVIEW describe many specifics on how to address barriers and create opportunities for meaningful work experiences. The wealth of topics covered is a road map to many of the new approaches that programs have identified to facilitate representing working families. They also convey some of the more sophisticated strategies that programs are developing to overcome barriers to work. For example, advocacy efforts must be designed to ensure adequate resources for appropriate day care for the children of working women. A number of efforts are under way across the country to use the growing need for day care as an opportunity to create job and income opportunities for clients. These community development initiatives are both definable and within the skill levels of most advocates. 3 Creative initiatives around other types of job creation and skill training are also being explored through community development strategies. Changing Models The recent National Legal Aid and Defender Association annual conference also devoted an entire day to the topic of providing support for low-wage families. The training track was combined with a national training conference of over 170 migrant farmworker advocates. Having focused for years on issues related to employment, migrant advocates served as both experts and enthusiastic supporters for an intensified focus on the needs of working families. The day offered a forum for many leaders in legal services to reevaluate their priorities and subject-matter concentrations given the increase in clients with work-related problems. The depth of the creative response to long-held assumptions again demonstrated the resiliency of the legal services community s ability to respond to the changing needs of our clients. Participants in this track took a serious look at changing models for service delivery and at means of improving relations with labor and community-based organizations. They reviewed the changing demographics of the work force, with particular attention to workers who cross international borders to work in the United States. They considered different approaches to priorities. Discussions covered the respective roles of employment and discrimination practice, consumer and bankruptcy issues, transportation needs, and immigration policy as a few areas that programs reemphasize to address the needs of working families. As a participant and planner of this event, I was struck by the excitement and new sense of accomplishment that seeing legal services practice through the lens of supporting working families gave those engaged in the work. The advocates felt attuned to the hopes and aspirations of their clients and truly believed that their advocacy could make a difference in their lives. The approaches they are developing seemed to them to hold a true promise for the mission most of us have aspired to for many years making ourselves unnecessary to clients who have been empowered with the tools they need to lead independent lives. Advocates also are inspired by the belief that strategies that develop and maintain wealth and resources in poor communities are best designed to address the root causes of poverty in this country. These advocates do not spend much time talking about what they can and cannot do under the LSC restrictions. They 3 See Stephanie Upp et al., Child Care and Community Economic Development: Critical Roles for Legal Services, 34 CLEARINGHOUSE REV. 3 (May June 2000). 632 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001

are more focused on the meaningful work that they can engage in and that qualifies as impact work under any rational definition of the term. Younger advocates in particular can embrace these themes to develop a practice in the spirit of Ramon Arias s admonition at the Substantive Law Conference. Many programs have embraced many of these changes in a positive way. Others probably do need to engage in a process of reanalysis to situate themselves best to accommodate the needs of the working poor. I am confident that this special issue of the REVIEW is a serious and comprehensive starting point for those interested in undertaking such a change. Comment: Union Membership Makes Work Pay The economy is about to crash headfirst into a restored world order. Under the newly restored Republican administration, the antiwelfare, antiworker policies we just fought will come to fruition quite possibly during a period of economic downturn. Without a major organized movement for social justice, the wage gap will grow wider. Racial and gender inequality will deepen. The Bush administration, staffed by the right wing s permanently employed old guard, will spawn a burgeoning contingent labor force. Yesterday s argument about whether mothers should work outside the home has been reframed: should a working mom work fifty hours a week, or sixty? Three decades of attacks on workers fundamental right to organize and bargain, to earn a livable wage, and to rely on medical and pension benefits have left most workers unprotected on the job. Low-wage workers who relied on welfare will find no safety net, precious little education or job training, and a ladder out of poverty that is missing the rungs. However, when legal services advocates recommend action to their working clients, there is one old economy tool that will make a difference: union membership. Unions of low-wage and immigrant workers are winning important battles in my home state of California and across the nation. Home care workers in California, uniting in a Home Care Worker Council under AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) and SEIU (Service Employees International Union), built a union and won significant wage and benefit increases. Janitors in Los Angeles won wage increases over 20 percent last spring. Our state AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) in coalition with community and religious allies just raised California s minimum wage by 17 percent. That is not adequate, but it is the foundation for livable wages. We are fighting to increase unemployment insurance benefits and to create a movable base period that reflects contemporary employment patterns. Nationally the AFL-CIO, calling for a new amnesty and an end to employer sanctions, reversed a decadeslong immigration policy. This initiative started in California with a central labor council resolution and resulted in a hearing with 20,000 union members, community and religious allies, and immigrant workers in Los Angeles last summer. As welfare-to-work workers enter public, private, and community service employment, those who join a union may find the benefits of collective action a better standard of living and a place to develop leadership skills. Collective action, including job actions, bargaining, and union-sponsored training, counters the right s individualistic ideological solutions. Meeting coworkers and understanding the contract can help integrate workers into the work force. The union can be a source of information about advancement, workplace rights, and benefits eligibility as well as a vehicle for community-based political action and education. Union members earn better wages. Union women earn 35 percent more than nonunion women. African American union members earn 39 percent more than their nonunion counterparts. For Latino workers, the union advantage is 55 percent. Union members are more likely to have medical benefits and pensions. Most important, today s unions offer members a real opportunity to develop their own leadership; women, people of color, low-wage workers, and immigrants have stepped to the forefront to lead their struggles. I urge advocates assisting low-income working families and counseling welfare-to-work clients to tell them to do what President Bush and the right least want them to do: Join a union or start one. Tom Rankin is president, California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. TOM RANKIN JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY 633