Laboring for Working People

A new organization fights an uphill battle for policies to create jobs and raise wages

Sara Horowitz is trying to build an organization just like the American Association of Retired Persons — but for people who work.

“Work in America increasingly means part-time, temporary, and freelance arrangements where pensions, health benefits, and employer-paid Social Security can be viewed only nostalgically,” she says. “This can be changed, but only with a national pressure group seeking responsible solutions to the problems of the new working world.”

Her organization, Working Today, has a long way to go to match the clout of the A.A.R.P. Working Today, which Ms. Horowitz founded here in 1995, has just over 1,000 members, an annual budget of $200,000, and only two part-time employees. By contrast, the A.A.R.P. has more than 30 million members, a $450-million budget, 1,800 employees, and so much political savvy and influence that few lawmakers dare to oppose it.

“It is clear that we have to build up our numbers before people will listen to us,” says Ms. Horowitz, whose principal goals include winning higher wages for workers, getting government to adopt policies that create jobs, and gaining passage of legislation that would allow employees to carry their health-care and pension plans with them from job to job.

Although Working Today has yet to attract much attention in Congress or state legislatures, Ms. Horowitz, a 33-year-old former labor lawyer and organizer, is being noticed in the foundation world. In August, she was named a “Public Interest Pioneer” by the Stern Family Fund — an award that carries a $100,000 prize and goes to only one or two leaders of recently formed advocacy groups each year. And in September, Working Today received a $40,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

It is not surprising that Ms. Horowitz became a labor activist. She proudly sits at a desk that was used by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union in the 1930s, when her grandfather was a vice-president. Her father was a labor lawyer, as is her husband. Creating New Options

Even though she inherited a legacy of union activism, Ms. Horowitz is trying to find a new vehicle to push for government policies that create jobs and lead to improved working conditions for employees. Traditional labor unions, she notes, are restricted by law from doing anything other than organizing at work sites — which leaves no option for self-employed people, those who have been laid off, and many others.

“If we just waited around for the traditional labor movement to reach them,” she says, “I think it would be a good long time.”

Marcia Festen, a program officer at MacArthur, says her foundation supported Working Today because the grant maker believes that workers with diverse needs should join together and “find a voice.” Too often, says Ms. Festen, workers have lobbied for government programs that help certain types of people, such as minorities.

“Sara’s trying to bring together different groups of people all differently impacted by changes in the economy, but to find their commonalities,” says Ms. Festen.

Origins of an Idea

The idea to create a workers’ version of the A.A.R.P. did not originate with Ms. Horowitz. Herbert J. Gans, a Columbia University sociologist, raised the idea four years ago in the journal Social Policy.

“Bill Clinton was elected President in large part because he proposed to do something about the ever-declining number of full-time, decent jobs,” Mr. Gans wrote. “But since being elected, he seems to have put aside this campaign promise. He needs to be encouraged to remember it, and one way to encourage him is to establish a national lobby of employees.”

Ms. Horowitz had just arrived at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government as a graduate student when she read about Mr. Gans’s proposal and realized that she wanted to be the person who carried out his idea.

“I looked at it and said, `This is too crazy. I can’t do this now. I just got here,’ ” she recalls. “But I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

A few months later she called Mr. Gans to talk about the idea. Excited by the notion even more, she switched from a two-year to a one-year program at Harvard and began planning Working Today.

Ms. Horowitz figured that few workers would join a group that did nothing but lobby. So, like the A.A.R.P., which provides its members with credit cards and life insurance, among other things, Working Today offers a number of tangible benefits to those who join.

For a $10 annual fee, members are eligible for discounted group rates on health and dental insurance. The organization hopes to provide other services, such as retirement plans and legal advice, in the near future.

“There’s that great saying of Harvard workers when they were organizing a few years back: `You can’t eat prestige,’ ” says Ms. Horowitz. “I like to say, `You can’t eat advocacy.’ ”

The question that remains, however, is how will Working Today attract the mass of people needed to make it a powerful voice in Washington?

“The short answer is that we try a lot of different things and see what works,” says Ms. Horowitz.

So far, the most effective tools have been advertisements that the charity places in free weekly newspapers like The Village Voice in New York.

Working Today has also benefited from some favorable press coverage. A year ago, Bob Herbert, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote about the charity in a piece about a Labor Department report that showed that in 1995 wages had increased by the smallest amount on record — despite a soaring stock market. “Now comes Sara Horowitz,” he wrote, “young and energetic and optimistic, with a project that is bold and timely and just might work.”

“When that hit,” Ms. Horowitz recalls, “it was like a radio call-in show where you’re giving away some prize. You’d put the phone down and the phone would ring again.”

Striking a Chord

Ken McNutt was one of the people who called. He had spent eight years as a project manager at the New York Health and Hospitals Corporation and then was laid off when plans for a new hospital were shelved.

He invited Ms. Horowitz to speak to members of 40 Plus, a non-profit organization that assists former managers and executives who earned more than $40,000 a year before losing their jobs.

“Sara came and gave her speech and struck a chord with a number of people,” says Mr. McNutt. Even though unemployment is relatively low, he says, many people who have been laid off — or worry that they might be — feel that the jobs situation is far worse than statistics suggest.

“It’s the great unaddressed issue,” he says.

Ms. Horowitz has been talking to many groups like 40 Plus lately. Working Today has just started its “Good Jobs in the New Economy” campaign, which will focus on linking the charity with employee associations and other non-profit groups concerned about jobs.

Two associations, each of which has more than 10,000 members, are now considering joining the campaign. (Ms. Horowitz will not name them because no final agreements have been reached.) With the help of the MacArthur grant, Ms. Horowitz will be hiring a full-time employee to work on the campaign.

“There has been an emerging group of employee organizations,” Ms. Horowitz says. “Every type of organization — from the auctioneers, to the acupuncturists, to the working-at-home society. But they haven’t linked up. They’re completely autonomous. We want to bring together all of these groups.”

Ms. Horowitz is also banking on the Internet to provide a means to reach people. The group now has a World-Wide Web site (http://www.workingtoday.org) that she hopes will serve as a resource for workers. Visitors to the site will be able to get answers to such questions as “I’ve been working next topeople who get benefits and I don’t get them; what do I do?” and “I think I’m owed overtime; where do I go?” Dues and Service Fees

Ms. Horowitz is hoping to get more foundation money to expand the group’s on-line presence. But she expects Working Today to wean itself from foundation dollars in the next three to five years. By that time, she hopes, the money the group earns from its membership dues and services such as health and dental insurance will pay most of the bills.

So far Working Today has only brought in about $20,000 from such dues — or 10 per cent of last year’s budget.

Michael A. Calabreseco cq, a lawyer at the consumer-advocacy group Public Citizen, says it is wise for Ms. Horowitz to look for ways to avoid dependence on foundations. But he cautions that it is hard to finance a group simply on money generated from low-cost dues and services.

Mr. Calabrese, who helped the Stern Family Fund review Ms. Horowitz’s application for the Public Interest Pioneer award, spent seven years at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. helping groups that provide services to non-union workers.

One such organization was the California Immigrant Workers’ Association, which at one point had more than 20,000 members and provided such services as English classes, medical care, and college loans. Mr. Calabrese says that workers would pay the $20 membership fee only when they needed assistance and then would let their memberships lapse.

Such tepid support was not a problem when foundations were financing the immigrants’ group, he says, but “once the grants that allowed us to provide services ran out, we shortly folded as a mass-membership organization. Twenty dollars could not sustain us. Each new member was becoming a net loss.”

Mr. Calabrese says he worries that Working Today could fall into that same trap unless it can recruit members at a very low cost and provide them with services that they are willing to pay for.

In spite of his concerns, Mr. Calabrese says the nation cannot afford for Ms. Horowitz to fail. “There is a tremendous need for an organization to speak for non-union workers,” he says.

Major Challenges

At times, Ms. Horowitz seems overwhelmed by the task of transforming her modest group into one as successful as the American Association of Retired Persons.

“This started out as an idea,” she says. “The challenge is, How do you turn an idea into a board of directors, funders, and members? How do you keep people involved in a project when it’s really just an abstract thought?”

But even if she has more questions than answers at this point, Ms. Horowitz says that running Working Today is the only job she can imagine doing. “When you face times that are so threatening to people economically,” she says, “it really affects us all. I can’t do anything else.”

Copyright © 1996 The Chronicle of Philanthropy