According to a scathing report published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this weekend, the unemployment hotline at Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development drops no less than 86 percent of calls on a regular basis. These are not calls ordering Chinese takeout or renewing that copy of “Iron Man” from your local library to avoid a $1-per-day late fee. These are calls from desperate citizens, trying to reach someone — anyone — to find out whether there will be bread on the table tomorrow night. And they are getting no answer. As the Sentinel’s public investigator writes, in most situations “the caller is soon disconnected with a simple ‘Goodbye’ from the calm, recorded voice of a man.” This makes the Dane County 911 Center look like a team of Swiss watchmakers.

Clearly, the hotline in question lacks the personnel required to manage a recession-level onslaught of unemployment related calls, despite recent efforts to hire more call center attendants. And undoubtedly, the JournalSentinel’s Pulitzer-worthy investigation will spur even more hiring efforts. But, lest we forget, there are other factors likely responsible for this dismal dropped call rate.

First, staffing levels at the Department of Workforce Development, just as at similar state entities nationwide, labored for years under the assumption recessions of this magnitude were relics of a bygone era. State government did not expect to be blindsided by the follies of credit default swaps, derivatives markets and all the other killer mushrooms that explain why so many Wisconsinites are inundating the unemployment hotline to begin with. Nobody was prepared for this.

But it wasn’t just that we weren’t prepared for the 2008 recession. In a non-negligible way, the problems at the unemployment hotline aren’t only about the recession. They are typical for a state that long ago abandoned New Deal policy in favor of oppressive Welfare-to-Work policies. If this were merely about the recession, the dropped-call rate would have remained steady as Wisconsin’s unemployment rate continued to hover this summer between 8 and 10 percent. (Indeed, our rate for May, 8.9 percent, is nearly identical to our current rate, roughly 9.0 percent.) Yet the Sentinel reports that in early May, the dropped-call rate was only 59 percent. This begs the question of what is going on at the unemployment hotline besides, of course, a lot of people being unemployed.

Here’s one hypothesis: Although unemployment in Wisconsin has remained relatively stable, the call center is busier because Wisconsin — not to mince words — has one of the worst, most oppressive systems of unemployment compensation in the country. So even those unemployed who are steadily getting back on their feet must navigate a bureaucracy determined, at every level, to secure ironclad proof that said individuals are looking for work without rest. The Sentinel reports the story of one man who spent hours upon hours proving to the bureaucrats on the other line that he was indeed continuing (and documenting) his job search. Wisconsin has been regarded as a pilot state for Welfare-to-Work-style programs, and our plane crashed into the north woods a long time ago.

Our signature program is called “Wisconsin Works” (W2), and has my vote for the most ironically named Wisconsin initiative in history. It’s also former Gov. Tommy Thompson’s most lasting legacy to the state. Here’s how it “works”: unemployed parents are guaranteed no more than five years of assistance from the state. During that time they are either 1) designated severely unemployable by the state and given $628 monthly in return for dozens of hours of “training” and “education,” 2) consigned to “community service jobs” for $673 monthly, again in return for extra time commitment spent building skills, 3) assigned “trial jobs,” where employers train otherwise-incompetent individuals while the government subsidizes these workers’ wages, or 4) simply found a job at which they can be competent, while providing a small safety net of services to make sure employment is successful. No one receiving W2 support can stay at any of these four tiers for more than two years.

Now, W2 welfare recipients are unlikely to patronize the state unemployment hotline; according to an interview with the Sentinel’s public investigator, they are likelier to direct their claims through county service providers. The story is not much better there. The Sentinel reported in January 2008 — before the recession really hit home for millions nationwide — a similar hotline in Milwaukee County, which deals more directly with W2 claims, had a dropped-call rate over 90 percent. Any logical citizen must conclude poor staffing and bureaucratic inefficiency, recession or no recession, beleaguer our welfare system. We can talk today about the 86 percent dropped-call rate at the DWD hotline. Will we talk tomorrow about similar rates at other hotlines throughout the state, where needy families are likeliest to turn?

The anarchist in me believes wage labor is essentially humiliating. From this perspective, it is all the more humiliating for the state to coax actual human beings through a bureaucratic, patronizing process that robs individuals of their God-given dignity. Forget for a moment the difficulties involved in raising a family on $628 a month, even with extra state welfare programs (which W2 participants may or may not qualify for to begin with). But imagine, for a moment, that you were indeed a severely unskilled worker. Imagine the myriad reasons why you might qualify for this status. How would you like the state government making your welfare conditional on ascending an arbitrary totem pole of skill-attainment, whose ultimate end might well be you working at McDonalds for 50 hours a week? How would you enjoy the suspicious glances of employees who just know you are only working among them because the state government has stepped in to compensate your employer for the hassle? I am not suggesting that nothing in life should be earned, but rather that some things in life may not be psychologically worth the earning, and the state has a responsibility not to humiliate people. States are not good at many things, but they are very good at humiliating people. For my part, I begin with the premise that any good society should be ready and willing to unconditionally provide any citizen in need with basic financial stability. And yes, Jim Allard, this means higher, higher, higher, Sweden-style taxes.

But back to the 86 percent drop rate at the unemployment call center, which recently has risen to 88 percent (according to Ellen Gabler at the Sentinel.) I am not an expert on the internal politics of the DWD. But my fair guess is that our Welfare-to-Work policies help explain why, over four months, with unemployment rates virtually identical for May and August 2009, the hotline’s dropped-call rate could have spiked 29 percent. Many callers are likely unemployed citizens perfectly capable of seeking employment but who can’t find any. These individuals, to continue receiving compensation, must consistently provide documentation that they are indeed looking down all the right avenues (more humiliation, see?) That means an increase in bureaucratic work the hotline just can’t handle right now. (I am, of course, open to better explanations from those who oversee welfare distribution.)

Well, the unemployment hotline shouldn’t be handling anything right now, because as a matter of principle they shouldn’t exist in their current form. It was Ronald Reagan who first made us scared of “welfare queens” parading down Fifth Avenue with their vodka tonics and fur coats. And it was Mr. Thompson who decided in 1997, to steer Wisconsin down a path for which he (and, lest we forget, then-President Clinton and the U.S. Congress) should never be forgiven. To the extent Wisconsin politics has a cult of personality at all, Mr. Thompson has cornered the market. His presidential run was dismal, but if he runs for governor in 2010, that cult of personality will be ready and waiting for him. But in that case, those of us for whom any discussion of social justice in Wisconsin begins and ends with our W2 program and other anti-welfare nightmares should be ready and waiting to remind him at least a few New Deal progressives still exist in a state where “socialist” was once regarded a legitimate partisan identity.

Eric Schmidt ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science.