"The Plight of the Province's Poor"
As the Newfoundland government made changes to public welfare, many
people watched its progress. Some of these people were members of groups.
They were members of unions. They were people in the social welfare
field. They belonged to church or social groups.
One such group was the Newfoundland Federation of Labour. In 1964,
it sent a paper to the Minister of Public Welfare.15 The
paper came out of a meeting. It talked about "the plight of
the province's poor." The Federation said the main problem
with welfare was that it only kept people alive. It did not give them
a fair standard of living.
The paper said the amount of welfare payments had nothing to do with
the cost of living. It also talked about how people were treated in
the welfare system. They were not treated with dignity. They had to
prove how poor they were before they got assistance. This is called
a "means test." Going through it made people feel bad about
themselves and their lives. Because people had to show they had nothing,
they could never save or build security for themselves. They would always
end up in the same position.
The Federation was also worried about "workfare."
This is when people have to work for their social assistance. Governments
had tried this before. Smallwood tried it in 1949. It did not work.
The Federation called it "forced labour." It said
that people should only have to work when they were paid decent wages.
The concerns of the Federation of Labour were old ones. Other people
had said these things again and again, for many years. But these problems
were deep ones. For at least 100 years, these problems stayed while
other things changed.
Some of these problems and concerns are still with us today.
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