WGBH Journal; Workfare Research Project, two Hundred Mile Fishing Limit, Catholic Labor Guild, Steam Sculptor

It seems to me that from a scientific point of view there might be a case. That a person shouldn't be informed of the other options because what we really want to do is structure a situation. See what a person's responses are to that situation. And. Then compare that with the responses of other individuals facing different situations. So I think that. This is a difficult question. And it's a question that is common to. Any social research in which people are given. Different. Opportunities. For better or for worse. Governor Dukakis is workfare program is also the subject of a federal study and a

report on the research project is a first feature on today's show. We'll also have a piece on the effects of the 200 mile fishing limit on New England fisherman. A report on the labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston and an interview with an artist who sculpts in steam. These are the features on today's edition of GBH Journal. Most people are not aware that Governor Dukakis is controversial workfare program but requires unemployed fathers on welfare to work for their welfare checks. He's also a federal government research and demonstration project. Federal officials want workfare to show whether or not 13 weeks of mandatory work experience will help

unemployed fathers move off of welfare and into regular paid jobs. The results of this experiment will probably influence to at least some extent. President Carter's welfare reform blackening. May be sad says Moore. The Federal Department of Labor has asked Leonard Housman a well-known economist at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Research to study the workfare program for them. Housman is exploring two major questions. First Will 13 weeks of work experience as a janitor for instance help an unemployed father on welfare find a permanent job second and a little more complicated. Will the welfare father find a job more quickly on his own. If he is told he will continue to receive at least a portion of his and his family's welfare check while he is working. This is a monetary incentive known as income disregard. Under ordinary welfare rules a wealthier father loses his welfare check and has Medicaid if he finds a job to try and answer these two questions Housman has divided wealthier fathers who are eligible for work there into three groups.

We've set up three groups. The first group has no experimental treatment. It is a pure control group. The second group gets one of the two aspects of the experimental treatments. It is given every person in that group is given a special incentive a special monetary incentive to work. And the third group people in that part of the experimental operation get both the special incentive to work the monetary incentive and are required to go through a work experience. Or what some people label as workfare. The essence of the design once having assigned people to those three groups is to see what the consequences are first providing an incentive and second providing a mandatory work experience.

Leonard Housman. There are different benefits available to an unemployed father depending on which control group he's in. If he's in control group 3 he has to work for his welfare check for 13 weeks. If he's in control groups one or two he doesn't. If he's in control group 2 and he finds a job he will be allowed to keep a portion of his welfare check under the income disregard monetary incentive if he's in control group 1 and he finds a job he'll lose his check. Welfare employees contacted by phone said that a welfare father is not usually told about the three control groups but only about the one he's been assigned to. Leonard Housman doesn't think welfare father should be told it's a very difficult thing. What do you do with people in these situations and what you tell people in these situations. Even if you have. Excellent motives that is. Let's say you're trying to improve the lot of people in the low income population. It is very difficult to decide what

information should be shared what shouldn't what treatments. Prior to that what treatment should be conducted what should and which ones shouldn't and so on. So I think that you raise an interesting question and it's not obvious to me that there is an answer. Do you have any inclination one way or the other as to whether people should be told that they have been. But there are other options and they have been assigned to this particular option. I guess I have inclinations but I don't think that they're germane at this point to this particular research project because in this particular research project I think that we were. Well I don't know that that's exactly right. I guess that. I do have feelings and I guess that the candid answer is that I'm someone inclined to

believe that. It is my judgment that it is in the interest of those who are part of the program for us not to be informing them of all of their options I should add though. There is no secrecy here and this is a very public thing and so no effort is made to keep information from people and there is no way for us to keep information from people and we don't try to do it. Granted if you were an played well father on welfare and you found out. That if you got a job you lose your welfare check and you found out that a friend of yours is in this special program where he got a job he got to keep a lot of his welfare check would you resent the situation and resent not having someone actively try and tell you the situation. I mean I might resent the situation but it doesn't mean that my resentment should be translated into everybody having the same situation because the fact of the matter is

that until you establish the consequences of giving people an incentive you're probably not going to be allowed to generalize in the form of change in the law and a change in the regulations so that I think that although individuals will understandably will have some resentments there is no way to avoid that. If we're interested in giving everybody over the long haul the same opportunity to keep their earnings. But I think that. It's our responsibility to convince one way or another. People response people are responsible for making changes in the law and that we can't do that without evidence and we can't gather that evidence. Ideally without going through a procedure similar to the one that we're going through Leonard Houseman at the Heller School for Social Research.

One way to look at all this is that unemployed fathers on welfare are being experimented on without their permission or even their knowledge for the time being though the program is not in operation. The welfare program was halted by a court injunction two weeks ago and will not resume again if it does resume again until the end of this month at the earliest. I mean any sense. As of April 1st the federal catchers have been lifted off the coast of New England are again free to begin harvesting fish every 200 mile limit a year ago as were established to regulate the types and numbers of fish which could be caught. These regulations are created quite a stir in the fishing industry.

In England. Fishermen are back out in the water again but a lot of them are still angry since the 200 mile fishing than have been in effect. There have been problems with the way the U.S. government has been managing the quota system. The system isn't set up on a quarterly basis which means the fishermen are allowed to catch a certain limited number of fish for that three month period. Cod and haddock have strict limits because they've been so overfished by foreign vessels in the past. The problems have occurred when all the allowable fish are caught in say two and a half months. This is already happened twice and both times the U.S. Department of Commerce has closed down the cod and haddock fisheries. But what do the fisherman the fish processors and fish distributors do when these fisheries are shut down. They stay at home and some get laid off. Although all the boats are allowed to go out and catch other species it's almost impossible to catch another species without incidentally picking up some cotton haddock. If this happens

fishermen have to throw the cod and haddock back into the water. Besides according to some fisherman catching other species doesn't pay enough. So a lot of fishermen simply don't go out. I asked Frank Burns a Boston fish processor how he felt about the quota system implemented under the 200 mile fishing limit one year later. Right now it's. Been well over a generation the fishing industry the help to the fishing industry. Right. Why we're not getting them out of fish that we should be getting in my estimation. And also the fact that it's. They talk about the private end of people lining up on the beach and fishing industries that are hiring. Because they're not getting enough product because of the crowd assuming the quota system. I think the court a systematic of a lot more fish in the ocean than the. Government people but the government realize that when they're not getting the proper information. Burns agrees though as do all fishermen that there are many fewer foreign vessels. The

problem is they say that the small U.S. fishing industry has been restricted to catching only about 15 percent of what the foreigners call it a year ago before the 200 mile limit went into effect and the way the quota system has been implemented has left a bad taste in their mouths. Besides leaving them regularly out of work the quota system is favored those fishermen who own large vessels the ones with large vessels can go out and catch huge amounts of fish during the first part of the quarter as they are probably doing now. Meanwhile the small boats can catch fewer fish but are still required to dock the boat when the limit is reached. U.S. Congressman Gary Studds who was responsible for leading the fight to pass the 200 mile limit spoke at the aquarium last week. He acknowledged that the fishermen were unhappy but blamed the problems on Washington. A lot of fishermen have a lot of free time this week. The hero is not always the hero. We have been scheduled to visit some of our fishing

ports this week we figured we'd wait till they got back out. I discovered that the biggest problem that those of us who represent the maritime areas have been particularly those of us whose concern is with the sanctity of the marine environment and the Marines and the life in the marine environment that nobody in Washington knew anything about it. And the best example I can think of to give you an idea of what we're up against in the atmosphere generally there when we first began the struggle for the 200 mile legislation. Some of you may recall that in 1983 in 74 we were trying among other things to protect the American lobster it was being taken in great quantities by foreign draggers on the continental shelf and it should not have been because as everybody in this room I'm sure knows the lobster is what is called a creature of the shell a creature of the continental shelves and under existing international law treaties to which the United States was a party of one thousand seventy three. It was illegal for any to take a creature of the shelf from any other country's shelf. However. The problem as it has so often been

in subsequent years was the United States Department of State we held hearings to find out why the State Department had not designated the lobster to be a creature of the shelf and therefore off limits to all foreign trawlers and the State Department. I KID YOU NOT came in and testified I can still picture the three men there they were all rind up in very very fancy three piece suits to inform the House Committee on merchant marine fisheries that the lobster was not a creature of the continental shelf because international law defines a creature of the shelf as an animal which never left the ocean floor and the State Department had verified that when the lobster was excited it jumped up and down and left the ocean floor. Now I am I wish I could tell you I was exaggerating make a point but I am not. We went through two years of this kind of testimony I asked the Department of State if they thought the Kangaroo was a creature of the earth.

There was no response whatsoever. I threatened on several occasions to put an unpaid lobster on the witness table in front of them to see if any of them had ever met one. I seriously doubt it. Washington is populated by people who think that lobsters are red and that is the source or at least the symbol of the source of a great many of the problems that we have had over the years in trying to accomplish things in the field of the marine environment. Congressman Studds is nevertheless pleased with most of the effects of the 200 mile limit so far. There is a lot less foreign fishing going on but it remains to be seen how the U.S. fishing industry makes out the regional management of the coastal waters is busy coming up with new ideas for implementing quotas. But because of the time it usually takes to change a bureaucratic tangle. There probably will be no changes for a while and fishermen will continue to be unhappy. This is Peggy bangs.

The labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston is the subject of our next story and with its School of Industrial Relations not 25 years old we sent reporter John Brigitte Bardot over to the Harrison Avenue office to find out exactly what these to do because. The guild is headed by Jesuit Fathers Mark Gavin the bad boy and it received its original mandate to serve the Boston community and labor relations and economic affairs. John Britton back spoke with Father Ed Boyle and asked about the labor guilds history. The institute has had a sort of complicated history it was in the 40s there was a priest involved in the area of labor in employee relations matters and there was a small

educational venture that he was into. He abandoned that he was assigned elsewhere. And so the really the history of what we would call the institute really formed in 1952. When it was actually generated by the labor guild some lay people with labor backgrounds some from this city and some from other cities gathered together and I asked Cardinal Cushing for a chaplain and an effort to organize a sort of a church supported labor educational program. How do your roles fit together with this it seems. This is a religious institution to how do you cross this fine lines and deal with industrial relations. Well we consider ourselves an ecumenical venture. Our school for example. Has is staffed by

all volunteer faculty professional people. So I'm a Protestant so my Catholic and somewhat Jewish but who all identify with. Improving the quality of employment and particularly improving the quality specifically of labor relations in in this area. For example this semester What courses are you offering. Well we offer every term the same basic core of courses. These would be the study of the labor laws the Taft-Hartley the technically the collective bargaining law and also the internal union affairs log a course in arbitration every time we have a course in grievance handling basic the administration of the contract. We have parliamentary procedure every term. One of the few places in the city really where you can obtain parliamentary procedure experience. Public

speaking is offered every term. Economics in the union to the basic economics. And we also over the last I guess five years we've offered a course in collective bargaining the actual negotiating techniques. We have a one of the interesting dynamics and I suppose the operation here at the school is to see the different groups who need the type of education that we're providing. And this shifts over history when unions are small and they cannot provide in their own operation educational resources then those people will come to us or if they're particularly stressed time inside their own. History this semester of what kinds of people do you. Well we have this semester we have some 50 different trade union locals represented here in our school. We have a

wide range of people both. Public and private sector and how many people you might have told their mole this semester. You know we have we're down this term we'd like to think the weather had some impact. We've got about a hundred five students enrolled in the school and before this I guess the lowest we've gone is to about 150 usually range between 150 to 200. However we do notice that more unions are doing their own educational project. And so we have to consider that. How about other minority numbers. Well I mean we are trying to reach out to the guild for example this time is taken and had in the. This special journal that the 4:51 is putting out this time we normally do not advertise like that. We consider ourselves a low budget. Organization. We know that the people who are associated with us on the whole are

people who are finding it hard to make ends meet. To get back to your other question we have been trying. To reach out. To the minority population for many years with. Only fair success we know that part of the fault is our as part of a simply limited staff resources. Specifically one population we can report a success this time is the Spanish speaking Father Mort Gavin who took over the guild's leadership in 1962 is himself an arbitrator and a member of the American Arbitration Association. Berg asked him how he's fit into the scheme of labor relations in his first official act in 1947. We have had some difficult and important cases here. There is a greater reservoir now of

competent arbitrators because the field is mature you know. And on top of that because of my association chaplain of the labor guild rightly or wrongly some management people would say we don't want that man fired. Yeah and. Then there are management people in the labor people who would see my name on a list of arbitrators and they would say Oh. You know how God knows what we're up against we don't want a pious priest to spend his time with a lady said Balaji and that's the Holy Name Society we want to fill that mold with what we're up against and I'm sorry I do not understand this but being a cleric I am familiar with the problem so I don't get many cases now. Maybe 10 to 12 a year. It's about as much as I need.

You know different art forms we've uncovered one of the most curious is the use of steam as a medium for sculptures. Artist John Branca creates different shapes and forms with steam. Working with motors and pipes and liquid and heat. They do God spoke with radio recently. And asked how this interest in steam forms developed. I think I've always like clouds I grew up in the middle of Kansas and did a lot of cloud watching when I was a child. I think clouds are something that that have a kind of mesmerizing attraction for people they always have and I think what

I'm doing is really just making the clouds rather than painting them on canvas. How do you create a steam piece what's the process. You know ironically enough in this high technology place called MIT I'm using a 19th century technology I'm using black iron pipes in that house. But the difference is that I not only use steam valves but I use hydraulic valves and solenoids and gas Cox any kind of valve ing system I can find that will take the pressures that I'm working with. I rebuild the valves in a machine shop so that they work in ways that they were designed to work in and sometimes I use Motors and drive shafts to synchronize the steam flow. And sometimes I use solenoids and electrically control the steam flow so there's you know there's infinite ways to do it. And if it's long it takes a long time to to build the same piece

and to experiment along the way. How much do you plan out what you're going to create. I mean you talked about how it can never be the same each time do you know what you're going to produce. Well yes and no. I I built I built pieces and see if I like them and see if they work and then I just take them apart and rebuild them if I don't like them. I've done enough work now to be able to to have fairly reliable hunches. But again it has to be really made to scale to test it accurately you can't make a very useful model but it would do you actually building that ends up producing the Steve I mean you're building a series you're putting together series of pipes is that the piece or is the steam the piece you know the part the pipes aren't the piece the same as the piece and it's had the steam emerges from those pipes in what sequence. And how how big

where and very specifically where it is because I design only for specific spaces I don't design pieces in the abstract. What do you work in Steven sort of theatrical fogger or other kinds of similar media. Well steam has one thing that CO2 for instance doesn't have and that is that it's it's has a very visible and clear energy source. And. That that is what makes it somewhat easier to control because I use plumbing systems and valves and so forth connected with the. With steam systems. But the thing I like about it visually is it energizes the environment and I think it energizes people who look at it in ways that that passive CO2 floating around doesn't do it creates something else. It's really a kind of environment. I do work outdoors and steam is dangerous indoors because

steam wraps around oxygen molecules and would suffocate an audience actually it's very dangerous and doors. You know it's it's an outdoor medium and I think it's rather specifically a winter medium because the winters in Boston at least in the Northeast are so bleak and so gray and so static. And I guess what I like about some of my winter projects is they say this thing activates the environment it makes it kinetic and makes it alive. Why is it I mean do people ever ask you this. Well yes they do all the time. I guess my answer is that art is really now not a question of what is art but what kind of a concept art is in the first place. And that if one is touched and if one is is engaged in a phenomenal that hasn't traditionally been called

Art in orthodox terms then one is having an aesthetic experience. And that's that's about as far as as I can go yes I do think it's art. Over the centuries that people have worked in other states of water I mean there's there's ice sculpture and probably has been. And there are fountains Why haven't people chosen stayed. Well steam has always been considered a workhorse. It's it's an energy system to do man's work. And I guess I feel I want to put the horse out to pasture to liberate it and to create steam fountains hopefully the winter counterpart of a water fountain. To make people aware of just how beautiful it is how compelling it is as it you know gushes out of the out of its source some valve and dissipates into the sky. I mean that whole metaphor of of

rising it seems to me makes very deep associations of some kind of wonderful energy and wonderful aspiration it's a very positive space filling thing to watch. For Thursday the 6th of April 1978. That's external regional news magazine writing for the. Producer and editor for The Journal has heard today's cover. Ever. Hope the drilling first day.