States can assign them to jobs right alongside other state employees, yet, under this proposal, pay workfare workers just pennies an hour for the same work. And a woman in a workfare job could be denied basic legal protections if a supervisor threatened to fire her unless she slept with him, or because she missed work to take her child to the hospital. Creating a subclass of working women without basic legal rights sets a dangerous and unacceptable precedent that none of us can afford to ignore. Americans should be outraged by these proposals for the same reasons they are outraged by the existence of sweatshops on US soil. When lawmakers ask for a license to exploit the most vulnerable working mothers, the answer must be no.
Work is work, and all working women deserve fair treatment.