Daniel Hemel Writes About 'Dignity of Work'

Who’s left out when Democrats talk about the ‘dignity of work’?

“The so-called dignity of work — that’s like hearing a fingernail on a chalkboard,” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) told fellow lawmakers as the House Ways and Means Committee debated President Biden’s Build Back Better social policy package, which went on to pass the lower chamber last month. “That’s the same kind of rhetoric they’ve always used to describe the situation of welfare recipients,” Moore continued. “You’re supposed to just go to work, take any old kind of job, even if you have no child care.”

But while Moore — a one-time welfare beneficiary who raised three children as a single mother — chafes at the phrase, her party’s leaders have adopted it as dogma. Biden regularly refers to the “dignity of work” in his speeches. Vice President Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have picked up the language, too. The White House even released a highly produced, 90-second video this summer in which a half-dozen Cabinet members lined up to answer the question: “What does ‘dignity of work’ mean to you?”

The “dignity of work” is also a motto for Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.), who signaled this past week that he wouldn’t vote for the Build Back Better legislation. When asked last year what it means to be a Democrat, Manchin replied that “the dignity of work … has to be our driver.”

This isn’t just semantics. The disagreements among Democrats highlight a deeper fissure on the political and intellectual left, with stakes that are substantive as well as symbolic. For some, the phrase reflects the party’s continued commitment to its historic blue-collar base — and perhaps a wistful hope that the party can win that base back. For others, it recalls the Democrats’ devil’s bargain with Republicans in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton and other party leaders embraced policies that pushed nonworkers off welfare rolls. To them, the phrase embodies ideas at odds with the party’s increasing emphasis on gender equity, racial justice and disability inclusion.

Read more at The Washington Post