From Welfare to … Unions?

Ron Scherer

Wednesday, Oct. 8, 1997 | 10:43 a.m.

NEW YORK -- In the 1950s, New York Mayor Robert Wagner Jr. became the first mayor in the US to recognize municipal labor unions - thus unleashing a new political force.

Now New York is home to another pioneering - and controversial - labor move: an attempt to unionize 38,000 welfare recipients who must work for their benefits.

The action is causing ripples nationwide, especially among anti-union Republicans. Critics argue that paying union-scale wages and benefits to welfare workers would make the program so expensive that it would undermine the biggest welfare overhaul in 60 years.

New federal laws require that 25 percent of eligible welfare res really clarified. The clams were very effective filters, clearing the entire water column every day."

Some of the most aggressive experiments are taking place in Asia, where aquaculture is a major industry and vulnerable to harmful blooms. The Chinese have had "a high degree of success" spreading powdered clay on blooms, according to PeterFranks, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

Algae binds to the clay, which is non-toxic to fish and sinks to the bottom, carrying the algae with it. This past spring, scientists in South Korea field-tested an approach that uses specially bred organisms to feed on specific algae. The results are not yet in.