Between Welfare and Work: The Roles of Social Service Organizations in the Social Regulation of Labor Markets and Regulation of the Poor

In the literature on the social regulation of labor markets, the point is often made that employers are not the only significant actors. Within the context of welfare “reform,” with its punitive work requirements and time limits for support, other institutions and actors are being revealed as significant for both the regulation of the labor market and the regulation of the poor. This paper seeks to conceptualize the multiple roles of non-profit social service organizations (SSOs) by connecting their everyday practices to a broader consideration of SSOs as significant mediating institutions that construct particular types of linkages between public assistance and waged labor. Interviews with directors of these organizations in Buffalo, New York in 1977 demonstrate that SSOs have significant impacts on the social regulation of the poor and on the implementation of welfare reform through internal rules, enforcement of broader social policy, job training and educational programs, and general family support. Further, these organizations are involved in political advocacy on behalf of their clients, key social networks with each other and with local businesses, and on-the-ground interpretation of policy directives, placing them in an often contradictory role as both enforcer and advocate and locating them between welfare and work. I suggest that by looking at these complex intermediaries we can identify ways in which social policy and labor market regulation converge in specific contexts. At a broader conceptual level, the issue of regulation is used in this paper as a framework for deepening our understanding of the combined forces of economic restructuring and state devolution. Key words: social regulation of labor markets, welfare reform, gender division of labor, social service organizations, Buffalo, NY