What would you rather do with your time--go to college, or pick up trash in parks for no pay?  If you're on Public Assistance, the city has decided that you no longer have a choice.  7,000 CUNY students have already been forced to leave school to "work off" their monthly check of less than $500, which already leaves students and their children way below the poverty line.  The Work Experience Program does not give people real jobs. It just prevents people from getting the education that they need to get a decent one in the future.
 

• 10% of the students at CUNY -- 20,000 people -- receive Public Assistance.
• There are now about 35,000 to 40,000 New Yorkers in the Work Experience Program (WEP). Mayor Giuliani wants to put 100,000 more people into the program this year.
• WEP workers are supposed to be assigned jobs based on their skills and interests, but almost all are placed in Parks and Sanitation, where they get no training, no skills, and are not given basic information about the unsafe conditions they are often working under.
• There are no job openings for WEP workers to move into. In fact, the city is laying off union workers.
• Student mothers are hit especially hard. WEP workers are supposed to get childcare or money to cover it, but usually neither is provided. Childcare facilities at CUNY have long waiting lists and often have no evening hours.
• 40% of CUNY students are immigrants, many of whom will be losing eligibility for Public Assistance under the Federal Personal Responsibility Act, which President Clinton signed last year.
• Governor Pataki has proposed deep cuts to welfare, as well as a $400 tuition increase for CUNY schools.  More poor students than ever will be forced to leave.
• This is not about helping people to get off welfare. 87% of welfare recipients who get a 4-year college degree never need welfare again.

a SLAM! flier
Student Liberation Action Movement

SLAM CUNY website