Press Release Archives - 654-96 Praisesf Achievement of Work Experiencce Program Participants

Archives of the Mayor's Press Office

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: December 14, 1996

Release #654-96

Contact: Colleen Roche (212) 788-2958 or Nydia Negron (212)788-9364

MAYOR GIULIANI PRAISES ACHIEVEMENT OF WORK EXPERIENCE PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS; COMMENDS DC 37 LOCAL 372 OR THEIR SUPPORT OF WORKFARE INITIATIVE

27 WEP workers move from Welfare to Permanent Union Jobs

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani today joined District Council 37 Executive Director Stanley Hill and the president of Local 372 Charles Hughes to honor participants of the Work Experience Program (WEP) during an awards ceremony held at DC 37 headquarters in Manhattan. Twenty-seven participants assigned to the Office of School and Nutrition Services at the Board of Education were provided with permanent jobs and received certificates of recognition for their excellent job performance. They join 30 workers honored last year who also moved off Welfare and into permanent union jobs.

“ This is the embodiment of what we hope to achieve with our Welfare initiatives,” said Mayor Giuliani. “We want to help people to move from dependency on the government into lives of independence and self-sufficiency. congratulate these 27 individuals who rose to the occasion and proved to themselves and to the world that a job is the very best social program there is.”

Addressing shop stewards, members of Local 372 and guests who gathered for the awards ceremony, Mayor Giuliani acknowledged the dynamic and creative union leaders who helped the City develop and implement the Work Experience Program. “With the partnership of Stanley Hill and Charles Hughes, we were able to make the reform initiative a fair and equitable program, protecting union members, while giving Welfare recipients the opportunity to work,” the Mayor said. “Today we see the culmination of those efforts, as we honor 27 Workfare participants who have moved into union positions.”

Since the City’s Welfare reform efforts began, there has been a reduction of 210,000 people, representing the largest reduction in the City’s history.

“When Welfare reform began twenty months ago, nearly 1.2 million New Yorkers were on public assistance,” the Mayor pointed out. “In a City of 7.3 million people, nearly one in six New Yorkers was not participating in our economy, nor utilizing his or her potential.

“We believed positive changes could be made to help those who were not working to better their own lives and the lives of their families, and instituted Workfare to revive and reinvigorate a sense of the social contract in the Welfare system: that for every right there is a duty...and that for every benefit there is an obligation.”