The Social Security Act of 1935 Followed the Division of Labor Implicit in the Family Wage System.
SECTION 5– UNDERSTANDING SPECIFIC ESC RIGHTS
The Purpose of Module 11
The purpose of this module is to help ESC activists understand social security as a right.
The module
- provides an historical background to the concept of social security;
- reviews the current vulnerability of social security in industrialized economies;
- identifies the elements of a social security system;
- reviews the main elements of a rights-based approach to social security;
- analyzes international and national legal instruments addressing social security rights; and
- considers implementation and enforcement mechanisms.
Historical background
Before states in the North began assuming increasing responsibility for the social security of their citizens, poverty relief and protection against economic insecurity were provided by a variety of private institutions.� These included the extended family, the church building, dignity who gave alms to the poor, and trade guilds that pooled their resources in order to protect their members during hard times.� Families diameter the main moral duty of protecting their mem�bers against starvation and destitution.� Relief of distress by social organizations outside the family was a affair of charity.� There was no formulation that people were entitled to social assistance as a right.� The "poor laws" adopted in countries such every bit the Britain rep�resented a rudimentary form of public responsibility for the destitute who were unable to ob�tain assistance from their families.�� However, acceptance of poor law relief often involved personal humiliation, the loss of civil rights, and compulsory removal to poor houses.� Hus�band and wife were separated in this process.�
The Industrial Revolution
The industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism from about 1750 destroyed the existing networks of social support.� Individuals now had to sell their labor on the labor markets at the prevailing market place rate.� These workers and their families were completely dependent for their livelihood on the regular payment of wages.� Large numbers of laborers were frequently un�employed for long periods without any form of insurance against the risks of work inju�ries, sickness or unemployment.� Families often ended upward living in slums in unsanitary and im�poverished weather condition.� In Das Kapital, published in 1867, Karl Marx identified the com�modification of labor, which stripped workers of their humanity as a major feature of the backer system.� To a big extent, the evolution of social security systems was an at�tempt to humanize the ravages inflicted past the capitalist system on the working classes.� To protect the urban working classes from destitution, sure protective systems were gradually developed, such equally savings bank facilities sponsored by government; placing some obligation on employers to maintain ill and injured workmen; the growth of common assist societies; and individual insurance providing life policies and funeral benefits.� However, equally the International Labour System (ILO) has pointed out:
The major social error of the fourth dimension was the persistence of the optimistic conventionalities that, if workers were left to themselves, they would be willing and able and imaginative enough to cover their risks individually or under some voluntary commonage arrange�ment.� The error should take been obvious enough.� Workers were totally captivated in survival from ane day to the next, and inappreciably had time to consider afar eventuali�ties.� Meeting the certain expenses of today took precedence over saving for the pos�sibilities of tomorrow.� Nor was there anything to spare against the more immediate risks of sickness or unemployment. [1]
Gradually equally a outcome of pressure from workers and other social groups, many states began to play a more active role in developing systems of social protection.� The motivation and po�litical philosophy behind the establishment of these systems, and the detail form that they took, varied significantly in different regions.
The government of the German Chancellor Bismarck was responsible for establishing the first broad system of social insurance betwixt 1883 and 1889.� The system was compulsory for wage earners, and was financed by contributions from workers and employers.� Workers, employers and the country all played a role in the management of the scheme.� Thus workers were protected from destitution and the stigma of poor-law relief past a system of guaranteed benefits.� The benefits received were related to an private's monthly contributions.� It should exist noted, however, that the purpose of introducing this system was non to bring most greater socioeconomic equality.� The system in fact reinforced the existing socioeconomic stratification past introducing a compulsory and distinctive social insurance system for each of the unlike classes of workers, e.g., one for blue-colour workers, one for agricultural work�ers, one for office workers, 1 for teachers.� Other countries in Europe followed the case of Frg by developing systems of social insurance for workers.� Past the 1930s social in�surance had spread to Latin America, the United States and Canada
A contributory system of unemployment insurance introduced in Great britain in 1911 was con�fined initially to but iii trades-engineering science, shipbuilding, and building and construction.� After Globe War I, the unemployment insurance organization was significantly expanded to other workers.� During the years between the wars, in which in that location was mass unemployment, a two‑tiered system emerged: unemployment benefits were available as of right for those with insurance, and ways‑tested social assistance for those without insurance.� A stardom was created between those claiming social security benefits equally of right and those claiming be�crusade of need.� This also tracked a pervasive public perception relating to the "deserving" versus the "undeserving" poor.
The development of social security systems in Great britain and the United states of america (and other coun�tries in this tradition) must be viewed against the backdrop of a political commitment to the marketplace mechanism for resolving problems of unemployment and poverty coupled with a deep suspicion of land intervention in market dynamics for social purposes.� There was thus a great reluctance to develop a welfare state in which the state played a major role in guar�anteeing universal admission to social security.� The social assistance systems adult in these countries were designed to provide a minimum of social security to the near needy.� Entitle�ment to assistance depended on the applicant demonstrating sufficient neediness by passing a means test.� This oft involved a degrading research into the individual assets and affairs of the applicant.� Excessive restrictions on access to social security during the menstruum of the Smashing Depression led to demonstrations and civil unrest.� The welfare state was ultimately instituted in these countries when large‑scale poverty and unemployment threatened to destabilize the prevailing marketplace‑oriented organization.
The emergence of "welfare states"
The Scandinavian countries in which socialist‑oriented coalition governments came to power earlier World War 2 made significant progress in establishing the social‑democratic model of welfare states.� Poor workers and farmers were able to mobilize political ability that was used to establish wide systems of social help financed from the general acquirement of the land rather than from individual contributions.� The aim of this organization was to reduce the inequalities and injustices produced past the capitalist system.� It proceeded from the basis that all people have certain "social rights."� The state is obliged to provide and protect these rights through providing universal admission to sure basic social benefits.�
The welfare country in Britain remained relatively small until the end of World War 2 in 1945, when it was extended substantially in accord with the recommendations of the Beveridge Written report, published in 1942.� The motivating factor behind the creation of the postwar welfare state was to facilitate the reconstruction of a new social order.� The main concern of the Beveridge Report was guaranteeing to anybody a basic minimum income below which no�body would exist allowed to fall.� In this way, social security could foster a sense of social in�clusion within society.� In the postwar period, regime was also committed to full em�ployment every bit a primary policy goal based on the new economic theories of John Maynard Keynes.�
Many elements of the welfare state were patriarchal in character.� Information technology was based on the model of a working man, earning a family wage to enable him to support his nonworking wife and other dependents.� In this mode, the welfare country mirrored and reinforced the sexual division of labor within society.� The postwar welfare state remained largely intact for more than two decades.� In the period following the recession of 1973, a series of major changes to the sys�tem were effected which represented the decline of the postwar welfare state in Britain.
The impetus for the expansion of social security in the United States came from the Great Low in the 1930s and World War Ii.� The Social Security Act of 1935 intro�duced pro�grams to encounter the risks of old age, expiry, inability and unemployment.� The main emphasis of the US social security system was to promote the security of workers through social insur�ance.� However, the act also made provision for federal subsidies to support social assistance programs in usa.� The way in which the social security arrangement devel�oped in the United States differed in important ways from the British system.� A fundamental differ�ence was that the US organization offers no correct to social security for unemployed men who are not eligible for contributory social insurance benefits.� In that location are growing numbers of workers who do not authorize for social insurance because of rising unemployment and insecure forms of labor.
Social security and social services
A distinction should be fabricated betwixt social security and social services, although the two are closely related and have developed together in many countries.� Social services are based on social piece of work and aim at promoting the welfare, development and social integration of indi�viduals and groups in the community.� They include services aimed at children and youth, the elderly, those living with HIV/AIDS, persons with mental or concrete disabilities, and people experiencing personal, family or social bug, east.g., homelessness and substance or alco�hol abuse.��
Social Security-The Current Crisis
The welfare land in many developed countries has come nether increasing pressure since the early 1970s as a result of the forces of globalization, economic stagnation and bourgeois political ideologies.� The opening of domestic economies to global contest has restricted the ability of many governments to implement social policies independently.� The increased mobility of labor, growing unemployment, and the increase in "atypical" forms of employ�ment, including casual labor, temporary work, homework and self‑employment, and have also created the need for new forms of social protection that cannot be accommodated inside the traditional social security programs.
The Example of Canada
In 1995, the Canadian authorities passed legislation repealing the Canada Help Plan (CAP), which provided for cost?sharing by the regime of all social assistance expenditures incurred past the provinces in their social assistance programs. CAP protected important rights of social aid beneficiaries by requiring provinces to respect these rights every bit a precondition for receiving full federal price?sharing. In its submission to the Un Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues (CCPI) described the introduction of CAP in 1966 as "a dramatic step frontward in the recognition of a person's right to social assist when in need." Up to that bespeak provincial programs treated people in poverty as "charity cases." Eligibility for aid had been uneven, and entitlement to aid was frequently characterized by arbitrariness. As well, there were tremendous variations in basic standards inside provinces and betwixt provinces. The repeal and replacement of CAP past the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) has removed most of the substantive and procedural protections which CAP ensured throughout Canada. According to the CCPI, the net consequence for the poor in Canada from the repeal of CAP has been:
1. The complete loss of the federal legal protections regarding entitlement to social assistance when in need forth with the other CAP rights . . . and
2. Related to the loss in (1) above, is an implicit deposition of the poor; the value of their citizenship and their social standing take deteriorated as has the legal recognition of their rights. Moves by the provinces toward treating social assistance every bit discretionary and social help recipients as unworthy are existence seen with increasing frequency. This, in plow, feeds public resentment and stigmatization of the poor.two
Governments take too increasingly adopted a political discourse blaming the welfare state for stifling the market, eroding incentives to work, and undermining family and community support systems.� As a result of these pressures and political perspectives, many countries have acted to curb social spending, and to dismantle many components of the social security systems that had been painstakingly synthetic over decades.
A downscaling of country responsibility for welfare accompanied by a greater assertion of indi�vidual and community responsibility is another trend in the restructuring of welfare sys�tems in many countries.� The new welfare ideas and policies in the Great britain are described in the post-obit terms by Mary Langan:
The welfare policy of the Labour Party, transformed into New Labour under the lead�ership of Tony Blair later 1994, was the clearest indication of a new welfare consen�sus.� The summit of responsibilities over rights, of individualism over collectivism, and of community over class, arguably revealed the abandonment of the traditions embodied in the post‑state of war welfare state.� The accent on the more than disciplinarian poli�cies associated with "workfare" rather than the supportive, if paternalistic, traditions of welfarism reflected the degree of Labour's change.3
She goes on to point out that the debate about the respective merits of selective and universal benefits
tended to obscure the overall deterioration in the real value of benefits, with the resulting impoverishment of a growing number of welfare dependants, and the ten�dency towards the exclusion of people from benefit-and in a sense from guild.� These trends were most apparent among young people and solitary parents-the targets of the workfare drive-and amid old people-casualties of the dramatic reject in the value of state pensions every bit well equally of the expansion of private pension schemes of dubious value.� It was striking that these groups also suffer public denigration, nigh explicitly in attacks on young beggars or mothers on welfare, simply more insidiously in the "demographic timebomb" delineation of quondam people every bit a threat to the residual of society.4
Elements of Social Security Systems
Characteristics of social insurance programs
- They are financed by contributions.
- They generate "earned" benefits for work�ers and their families.
- They provide for various contingencies that interrupt or stop earnings (such every bit illness, old age, maternity and unem�ployment).
Characteristics of social assistance pro�grams
- They are non-contributory and met from general revenues.
- They are designed to supplement the incomes of particularly vulnerable groups (elderly and dis�abled).� In some countries they provide a "safety net" for those who are not able to access social insurance bene�fits.
- The benefits and eligibility conditions vary from state to country.� The benefits may be either in greenbacks or in-kind in the form of food aid.� The schemes include "income replace�ment schemes" or "toll bounty schemes" that provide complete or fractional com�pensation for family unit care, health intendance, funeral costs, etc.�
In developed countries social security schemes exist next with various private ar�rangements made past people to protect themselves against certain contingencies.� These in�clude private savings, private insurance and alimony funds.�
Social Security in Developing Countries
Billions of people in developing countries face astringent poverty and deprivation without whatsoever form of social security.� In addition to persistent mean solar day-to-day deprivation, they are also vulner�able to crises arising from natural calamities, civil war and fluctuations in the economic system.� The extended family and kinship ties that traditionally provided support are increasingly breaking down due to economical and social changes, including rapid urban migration.
Faced with big numbers of needy persons and with electoral coercion, many govern�ments announce promotional or populist measures.� These measures may indicate a symbolic commitment to the problems of poor, and it may be improve to have some populist measures rather than no programs for the poor.� However, such schemes tend to lead to corruption, po�litical patronage and waste product, and often end up non reaching the intended beneficiaries.� Thus, instead of populist measures based on a particular leader or political party'due south whim and fancy, what is needed is a social policy to deal with the question of poverty.� �
Full general characteristics of social security in developing countries
- Few countries have established comprehensive social security schemes with universal coverage.
- They tend to target special groups (children, pregnant mothers, etc.).
- Most schemes deal with emergency relief programs to provide back up during calamities.�
Developing countries in their efforts to institute social security systems encounter obstacles such as the scale of poverty, lack of administrative capacity, debt brunt and structural ad�justment policies imposed by international financial agencies. (See Module 27.)
Conventional programs that are based on the needs of urbanized wage-earning workers can�not be hands adopted to meet the needs of the large poor rural populations in developing countries.� Similarly, conventional programs are often not suited for meeting the needs of big numbers of people who are working in the informal sector.�
Thus, it is of import to have a broader view of social security in situations of poverty and deprivation with an underdeveloped economy.� Social security should be seen every bit "the pre�vention, past social means, of very low standards of living irrespective of whether these are the upshot of chronic deprivation or temporary adversity."5
From a broader perspective on social security, the function of public action becomes essential.� It would need the design of a greater variety of schemes including widows' pensions and food-for-work programs as well every bit improvements in sanitation, water supply and education.
An effective and equitable social security system cannot be established in a context in which authorities is undemocratic and corrupt, and avenues of public protest and participation in the policymaking process are nonexistent.�
What Is Lacking-Funds or Political Commitment?
The neglect of protective social security for the unorganized sector is based on the supposition that the poor are and so numerous that a comprehensive cover for them would be financially not viable. As the Human Development Written report of 1991 says, "The lack of political commitment, non financial resources, is the real cause of human being neglect." For example, in the case of India, it is estimated that 0.iii percent of the Gross Domestic Production would be sufficient to provide for those below the poverty line, who are unable to contribute towards their social security. With 0.3 percent of GDP, a minimum package of social assistance encompassing one-time age pension, maternity benefit, and survivor do good could be provided to the entire eligible population.6
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USING MODULE 11 IN A Training Program
NOTES
1. International Labour Organization, Introduction to Social Security (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1984), two.
�ii. The Charter Committee on Poverty Issues (CCPI), Submissions to the Committee on Economical, Social and Cultural Rights re: The Review of the Third Report of Canada at the Committee on Economical, Social and Cultural Rights 19th Session (Nov-December, 1998), sixteen November 1998, 10.
3.�Yard. Langan, "The Contested Concept of Need, in Welfare: Need, Rights and Risks, ed. M. Langan (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 27-28.
4.�Ibid.
v.�R. Burgess and N. Ster, Social Security in Developing Countries: What, Why, Who and How?, ed. E. Ahmed et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Printing, 1991), 43-47.
�half-dozen. Kathyayini Chamaraj, "Why Nothing Changes for the Poor," The Hindu, 19 January 1999.
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Source: http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/edumat/IHRIP/circle/modules/module11.htm
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