Workfare

Workfare is a policy of making the receipt of unemployment benefits conditional upon the requirement to look for work or actively engage in other prescribed activities. For example, in 1998, the Labour government in Britain introduced a New Deal program for young people. Funded by a windfall tax on the profits of the privatized utilities, this policy meant that all 18-to 24-year-olds receiving unemployment benefits had an obligation to accept a job with a private-sector employer that is paid a wage subsidy, work with a nonprofit voluntary organization, work for the government's own environmental service task force, or study on a full-time approved course. A green paper noted that there would be no fifth option of simply remaining on unemployment. Over time, the Labour government has extended the New Deal program to cover other groups, such as the over-50s and single parents. Workfare is important because it suggests that individual duty or responsibility is integral to any legitimate or well-functioning set of governance arrangements.

Workfare is an example of conditional benefits, that is, the receipt of benefits is tied to the exercise of various conditions. Workfare is not the only way that conditional benefits may be manifested. For example, the entitlement to make full use of public health services might be linked to a duty not to smoke. However, workfare is the most prominent recent example of this approach.

Workfare has arisen because of dissatisfaction with benefit payments in the post-1945 social democratic [Page 1022]welfare state. Although conditions were not entirely absent in the welfare state, much greater emphasis was placed on the unconditional nature of social benefits, such as health and education. On the Right, neoconservatives voiced concerns during the 1980s that the welfare state perpetuated rather than resolved problems as people came to depend on the state rather than to take measures to help themselves escape their problems. Unconditional unemployment benefits meant that either people did not have an incentive to look for work or they were irrational and needed formal instruction to get a job. On the Left, reformists argued during the 1990s that unconditional benefits violated a principle of reciprocity. The view is that the provision of benefits to an individual imposes a reciprocal obligation on the recipient to use these benefits in a proper manner. This stance is found within writings on the third way and is captured in the doctrine that there should be no rights without responsibilities. Although parts of the Left and Right both endorse workfare, the nature of their justifications is different. For the Right, this is linked to concerns about a dependency culture. For the Left, reciprocity is emphasized as a way of preventing people from free riding on the contributions of others.

Workfare is not accepted uncritically. Some reject all conditional benefits, arguing that they are illiberal and license authoritarian state interventions. Others in Britain have criticized the New Deal by saying that this is not the most cost effective way of reducing unemployment. These disagreements highlight that debates within public policy are rarely settled. Conflicts exist within the framework of the same values (a debate between reciprocity versus illiberalism points to different ethical judgments of workfare), as well as between different values (the ethical case for the New Deal versus the costs of running this program).

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