In 2006, Teresa Perez and 14 other immigrant women began meeting at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park to launch an employee-owned housecleaning business. Together, they called it SĂ Se Puede. The name was a nod to immigration reform protests then popping up across the country but in Brooklyn, it doubled as a sales pitch to flush homeowners in neighboring Park Slope: We Can Do It!
Within four years, SĂ Se Puede’s worker-owners, many of whom did not speak fluent English, tripled their wages to as much as $25-an-hour. Last year's open house to recruit new members drew over 90 applications for 13 spots. The company, now with 37 worker-owners, has grossed $1.6 million.
So, can SĂ Se Puede's success be replicated? City Council Speaker Christine Quinn hopes so.
In an October speech widely reported as a balancing act between business interests and the then-ascendant Occupy Wall Street movement, Quinn, a likely mayoral candidate in 2013, pledged funding to the Center for Family Life to incubate three new worker cooperatives per year in low-income neighborhoods. It is welcome support; there are fewer than 20 such co-ops in the city.
Organizers say there should be more. Worker coops, they maintain, create living wage jobs and, in partnership with food, housing and credit union cooperatives, have the potential to transform high-poverty neighborhoods.
For that to happen, though, significant barriers, not least, access to capital, must be overcome. Lack of information is another huge problem, says attorney Ted De Barbieri, who advocates for community development organizations through the Urban Justice Center. Supporters readily admit the average straphanger does not have a clue about what a worker cooperative is or how it functions, much less that employee-ownership can raise wages.
What is certain at this nascent stage is that worker cooperatives transform owners' lives.
"I was able to grow my ambition," Perez said through a translator. "Before, I'd say I can't study but now I say, 'I would like to go to school.' Now, I think of things like that."
The most well-known cooperative in New York City is probably the Park Slope Food Coop. It is the largest of its kind in the nation, and by co-founder and general manager, Joe Holtz’s estimate, people join for a sense of community as much as for the cheapest organic tomatoes in the five boroughs.
Worker coops, which started organizing through the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives in 2009, are slightly different. Economic and social justice motivates many of their owners.
In the south Bronx, Green Worker Cooperatives creates jobs, "as a response to high unemployment and decades of environmental racism." In Brooklyn and Queens, former day laborers formed Apple Eco-Friendly Cleaning to escape buyer whims at la parada, a decade-old, all-weather corner at the intersection of Marcy and Division where women line up for work every day. Take the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway farther south and factory workers fed up with standing eight-hours-a-day, are meeting weekly to create Golden Steps, which specializes in non-medical elder care.
“These are the new generation of worker coops," said Vanessa Bransburg, coop coordinator at the Center for Family Life. "Even if you don’t know how to write you can join."
From California to Maine, over the last 15 years low-wage workers have steadily organized employee-owned small businesses. The trend counters a common perception that coops are products of middle-class enclaves like Park Slope.
At national coop conferences, Bransburg said, her Sunset Park contingent stands out among largely white, male crowds: "We typically require translation and childcare."
If labor exploitation initially pushes workers into forming coops, those that stay do so because of an intense commitment to the welfare of the group. It is this orientation toward consensus, not profit that distinguishes the worker coop model from traditional businesses. Along the way, worker-owners discover and develop an enviable set of skills, not least, patience and conflict resolution.
"It's very difficult to get along with 20 to 30 people, each one having different opinions," SĂ Se Puede vice president Catalina Rodriguez said through a translator. "You have to be very open."
Listening and a willingness to compromise, as well as the courage to enforce established rules, benefit Rodriguez. Before forming SĂ Se Puede, Rodriguez earned $8 an hour to clean homes. Invariably however, homeowners also expected her to care for children and prepare meals, and Rodriguez was in no position to object. She received no pay for overtime. Now, she said, "I manage my own time and for four to five hours of cleaning, I earn up to $120."
After a year in operation, the owners of Apple Eco-Friendly Cleaning earn more money than could be had for the few hours they would work after long waits at la parade. But getting there and the time demands -- six months of twice daily meetings for about five hours --whittled down interest from 20 women to the current five who often meet in the Jackson Heights living room-bedroom-office of member, Luz Maria Arias. It is a strong reminder: Worker coops are not easy.
"Not everyone wants to become an entrepreneur or face the responsibility of being an owner," said day labor organizer Ligia Guallpa. She cautions against well-meaning nonprofits inserting bodies into pre-packaged companies and industries. Instead, the impetus should come from the workers. During Guallpa's weekly support meeting for women working at la parada, some of them asked for her help in forming the company.
Excluding the salaries of Bransburg and Guallpa, neither SĂ Se Puede nor Apple Eco-Friendly Cleaning required much up-front funding. Members pooled their money to get the little that they did need.
But for many if not most worker-coops, access to capital has been a persistent issue -- and one that limits coops to come-as-you-are sectors like cleaning or childcare.
Most banks do not recognize the coop model. Even if they did, "service-industry workers typically don't have the wealth or assets that banks traditionally look to for collateral," said Carmen Huertas-Noble, an associate professor at CUNY School of Law and founding director of its community and economic development clinic.
As a result, worker cooperatives typically attach to community-based nonprofits. Others also seek funding from local credit unions or the National Consumer Cooperative Bank based in Washington, D.C.
Other funding sources may be emerging, though. In addition to Quinn’s $150,000 pledge, the United Nations recently launched a global campaign declaring 2012 the year of the cooperative. And in December, U.S. Rep Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania will introduce a bill to help grow coops nationwide.
At the neighborhood level, SĂ Se Puede and Apple Eco-Friendly Cleaning are encountering a new challenge: competition. SĂ Se Puede has experience but Apple’s owners mix their own non-toxic cleaners, a competitive advantage that opens another exciting prospect for 50-year-old Arias.
"Maybe we’ll become millionaires by making products and not cleaning!" she said in Spanish, to laughter from her four co-owners. They are huddled around their other office, a four-top in Starbucks.
"Look, dreaming doesn’t cost anything," Arias says, with a deep shrug. "This is America."
Carla Murphy is a freelance journalist and graduate of the CUNY journalism school.
New figures confirm that poverty is increasing in New York City. 

What is the city's response? Budget cuts. Less than two weeks after 
the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the city's poverty rate jumped to 
20.1 percent in calendar year 2010, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's budget 
director demanded that all city agencies, including education and uniformed 
services, immediately plan to cut 2 percent for the remaining eight months of this fiscal year and 6 percent next year.
Yet a series of reports make it clear that even without the latest round of cuts, poverty agencies -- facing rising need and falling resources -- 
cannot maintain services.
 In fact, the Mayor's Management Report for fiscal year 2011, released in mid-September and not generally known for highlighting 
bad news is 
full of bad news. A companion report from the mayor's Office of 
Contract Services and a new Independent Budget Office fiscal brief on children's servicesprovide further evidence that the agencies can't meet their stated goals.
But the mayor in his own press release for the management report ignored all that saying simply: "The data show that city agencies continue to provide the high-quality services that New Yorkers have rightly come to expect."
The U.S. Census report in September not only noted the overall poverty 
rate rising to 20.1 percent in 2010, up from 18.7 percent in 2009, but that the rate for families with children headed by single mothers 
in New York City reached 41.1 percent last year, up from 38.8 percent in 2009. The mayor responded: "When the economy slows down, there are fewer jobs. … People pay less, tip less, whatever. That certainly filters all the way down." But he added, "The city has one of the strongest safety nets in the country."
The safety net in some agencies, though, looks torn.
TheAdministration for Children's Services itself notes in the Mayor's Management Report that 
there was a 20.2 percent decline in children in at-risk families receiving contract 
preventive services in 2011, 
compared to 2010 (down from 29,945 children served to 23,881). The 
decline, Children's Services reports, was "due to continuing pressures on preventive services."
The new fiscal brief from the Independent Budget Office paints a larger picture of what has happened at Children's Services. Between 2000 and 2011 the agency shifted its emphasis from placing children in foster care to providing preventive 
services and therefore minimizing foster care placements. The shift 
"contributed to a 54 percent reduction in the number of children in 
foster care and a 28 percent increase in the number of children receiving preventive services while remaining in their homes," the 
report says.
Then came the recent budget cuts. "Because spending on 
preventive programs is discretionary, these services compete with other programs for scarce city dollars," the budget office explained. 
This has led to a 25 percent reduction in the number of children receiving services over the last two years.
The cuts are counter-productive in fiscal terms. A family preventive 
services slot, according to Children's Services, costs an average of $10,000. On the 
other hand, "the average cost of keeping a child in foster care 
averaged $49,000 in 2010," the budget office notes.
The report goes on to explain the problems that providers face -- and will face in the future -- as budget pressures make funding uncertain. For instance, in early 2010, the mayor wanted to eliminate 3,000 preventive care slots. The City Council 
restored funding for 2,900 slots, but for only one year, fiscal 2011. Then in May 2011, the mayor continued funding for those 2,900 slots for the current 2012 fiscal year "and provided enhanced funding for 
2012 and later years." Yet, the brief continues, "significant risks" remain "as long as the 
majority of preventive services are considered discretionary by the 
state."
"Budget constraints” have also caused cutbacks in another crucial part of the city's safety net for children: daycare. According to the 
Mayor's Management Report, total enrollment in subsidized childcare has dropped from 106,761 in 2007 to 98,643 in 2011, a 7.6 percent cut. In the most recent year, 2010 to 2011, 3,603 slots were 
lost. The elimination of childcare vouchers for 3,716 children between 2010 and 
2011 was, according to Children's Services, "driven primarily by a reduction in 
voucher resources." In addition, staffing at the agency has dropped by 1,712 in the past three years to 6,213, a 21.6 percent reduction.
The strain appears within the offices of agencies dealing with low-income New Yorkers. Ten years into the Bloomberg administration, the Human Resources Administration blames delays in registering its $606 million human-services contract -- only 62 percent were sent to the city comptroller on time, vs. 97 percent on time in 2008 -- on the "implementation of multiple new automated tracking 
and management systems," a lot of contracts with similar start dates
and the "implementation of new business procedures."
The Mayor's Office of Contract Services' annual Agency Procurement 
Indicators report for fiscal 2011, also released in September, shows human services contract delays extend to several other human services agencies. The Administration 
for Children’s Services, Office for the Aging, youth, homeless services, and various health agencies "continue to face significant 
challenges in their efforts to register contracts in a timely manner, 
as they simultaneously confront major budgetary constraints in the 
human services sector."
Average lateness in registering contracts in these agencies "increased 
to 41 days in fiscal 2011 compared to 27 days in fiscal 2010." One result: Cash-flow loans from a city fund for human-service contractors who start or continue services in spite of not having a registered contract jumped from $29 million to $43 million in the past year.
The Mayor's Management Report also shows that whatever strength the city's safety net retains stems primarily not from the city, but 
from federal and state funding and mandates. For instance, the number 
of New Yorkers receiving city-administered cash assistance from the Human Resource Administration's basic assistance program has actually fallen by 1.4 percent since 2007, from 360,700 to 355,600 in 
2011.
At the same time, the enrollment numbers in the federal food stamp and 
Medicaid programs have grown dramatically. From 2007 to 2011 the 
number of New Yorkers receiving food stamps (funded by the federal 
government) has grown by 67 percent, from 1.1 million to 1.8 
million. The city administers the program and has received an award for 
its role in expanding food stamp enrollments.
The number of New Yorkers enrolled in public 
health insurance programs, including Medicaid, (funded by city, state, and federal 
governments) has grown by 14 percent, from 2.56 
million to 2.91 million.
Yet the Mayor's Management Report shows that overall city, state and 
federal spending on social services has remained essentially flat for the 
past three years, ranging from $8.3 billion in 2009, $8.5 billion in 
2010, to $8.1 billion in 2011 (numbers not adjusted for inflation).

The Department of Education differs from several of the human service agencies because of its nearly $2 billion increase in spending over 
the past three years. Its budget now totals over $19 billion in a $66 billion city budget. Despite that, 
problems are obvious even in the good-news Mayors Management Report.
School class size increased in grades kindergarten through eight by an average of 1.6 
students per class. In the crucial early elementary grades, average 
class size rose by 2.2 students.
As scaling back in the city's capital budget has slowed school construction, the number of new class seats has dropped in just one year, from 18,525 in 
2010 to 3,684 in 2011. The percentage of elementary and middle school students in schools that exceed capacity increased to 24 
percent in fiscal 2010, up from 20 percent in 2008. (Many 2011 results are not yet available.) Thirty one percent of elementary schools 
exceeded capacity in 2010, up from 26 percent in 2008.
The department's convoluted management of student 
achievement data in the Mayors Management Report makes it difficult if not impossible to 
judge the educational impacts of the past three years of cuts. From 2008 to 
2010 the four-year high school graduation rate improved from 56.4 percent to 61.0 percent, and the rate for students with disabilities 
improved from 22.5 percent to 27.9 percent.
But from 2008 to 2011 the percent of students in grades three to eight 
meeting or exceeding standards in English language arts declined from 
57.6 percent to 43.9 percent. In math the percent declined from 74.3 
percent to 57.3 percent.
The department blames the achievement declines in grades three to eight on changes in state's method for scoring standardized tests, but achievement indicators crafted by the department itself also show 
declines. For instance, the percentage of schools receiving As or Bs 
on the department's own "School Progress Reports" dropped from 79.0 
percent in 2008 to 62.3 percent in 2010.
In another department-created indicator, the percent of schools with "Well Developed or Proficient on 
Quality Reviews" dropped from 94.7 percent to 84.1 percent between 2010 and 2011. The 
management report explains, "This change reflects a higher standard of 
school performance for schools to meet … to ensure all schools are 
ready for the increased challenge of the Common Core Learning 
Standards."
The city recently laid off some 672 school aides, but mayoral threats to lay off teachers have been abandoned. It should be noted, however, that through resignations and attrition, school staffing from 2008 to 2011 fell by 6,059 or 4.3 
percent. This decisions by the mayor and his school chancellors to not fill these vacant position is of course the main reason for increasing class size.
The round of budget cuts now underway could prove to be much more challenging to agencies and service beneficiaries and could face
more challenges from the City Council and New Yorkers. Put simply, the two city management reports and the Independent Budget Office's report on one human service agency together suggest that city agencies are stressed and that poor New Yorkers are not getting the level of services they did three or more years ago.
The new tack in the budget-cutting directive -- demanding across the 
board cuts, with no exceptions -- is especially troubling. The evidence in these reports is that the cuts are already disproportionate. School kids, children at risk, working mothers, poor seniors -- they are the ones experiencing reduced services.
As two earlier public finance columns illustrated, the Bloomberg administration's efforts on poverty issues have been limited 
to pilot programs and a push for private, philanthropic action. These new reports suggest that this is not a time for promoting and administering charity but for taking a hard look at the public policies and 
 programs that are losing any battle against poverty in New York 
City.

Glenn Pasanen, who has taught political science at Lehman College, has been in charge of Gotham Gazette's finance topic page since 2001.
"Thank you for calling Workforce1," begins the recorded greeting. "Your success begins here."
If you called, you live in New York City and are one of an estimated 600,000 city residents who need a job.
Many lack an advanced education, a professional network and financial resources. With these handicaps, they must find work in the most competitive job market in decades, in one of America’s most competitive cities. And so thousands of them -- 387,661 people in 2010 -- will try and find employment through work-related education, job training and employment services -- assistance known as workforce development. For them, the workforce development system is a lifeline to the job market and employment.
For many workers, the lifeline falls short. It simply cannot overcome the shortage of employment, or provide work paying a decent wage. Workforce development may offer a path to employment – but not to the middle class.
The Department of Small Business Services (which contracts Workforce1), the Human Resources Administration and the Department of Youth and Community Development contract out the majority of public services to providers. These providers -- and there are thousands of them -- operate in every borough as a bridge between workers without work and businesses with jobs.
Workforce1 has offices in all five boroughs, each managed by a nonprofit, for-profit or educational institution that won a competitive contract. These centers prepare and connect New Yorkers with job opportunities, but the priority is jobs placement, the connect part.
The first stop for job seekers is a two-hour introductory session delivered by a career advisor like Gwendolyn Gladden. It's like a class for the jobless. Standing in front of 30 jobseekers wearing a neatly ironed power suit, Gladden lectures with a mix of hope and realism. "Don’t come with that old tired energy," she said. "Come with that enthusiasm. Today is the day I find employment."
She reminds the class it takes three months to find a job –- and only if they treat finding a job like a job. Yes, she said, $80,000 salaries exist, but not everyone can get one. And some of the students may have to change professions. After all, Gladden did.
After 20 years in the health care industry she lost her job. So she came to Workforce1 four years ago. Now a career advisor, she helps those who sit where she once sat.
A majority of the jobseekers receive general assistance on how to navigate the job market and ace an interview. They get help on resume building, interview prep, career assessment, counseling and access to job listings.
Those who qualify may receive more substantial and specific training at one of Workforce1’s three sector-oriented centers.
The city’s total workforce development expenditure is $1.36 billion, with $615 million coming from city revenues and the rest from a variety of sources including Congress under the Workforce Investment Act. Federal funding for Workorce1 has decreased from about $62 million in 2006 to just over $36 million this fiscal year.
Because of budget cuts, the Individual Training Grant voucher program, which provided funding for some specific skills training, has been temporarily suspended. This has affected the Transportation and Industrial Center in Queens, which provided Computer Numerical Control machinist training. The Long Island City Health Center'sparamedic and emergency medical technician programs also have been suspended due to the funding problem.
Workforce development began seriously with the 1960s War on Poverty. The system trained entry-level workers and "more or less threw them over the wall and hoped they landed in a job," said Paul Osterman of MIT's Sloan School of Management. Now the city, like Workforce1, follows a demand driven strategy: work with businesses, learn what jobs are or will be available, and train people for those jobs.
The problem, though, is the available jobs. Some economists like to compare the American economy to the letter U -- some high-income jobs on the top, a lot of low-income jobs on the bottom, and a hole where middle-income jobs used to be. One System for One City, the city’s state of the workforce development system report, found, "As a tentative recovery began in 2010, employment growth occurred both in high paying sectors like finance and insurance and professional services, and typically low paying sectors like health care, retail, and accommodation and food services."
The recession has obviously led to a jobs deficit. But even if thousands of new jobs are created, middle-paying manufacturing jobs are unlikely to return from the grave. The job market will likely continue to be “U” shaped, which means lots of low-wage jobs that help New Yorkers survive on the ragged edge of the economy with little chance of escape. There is a good jobs deficit.
Of course, many decent middle-paying jobs exist. But less educated workers, typically those in the workforce development system, are unlikely to get them. Where are all the Good Jobs Going? a recent book on job quality in America, stated, "Good jobs are not disappearing for everyone, but they are largely disappearing for less-educated workers." Only 9 percent of the people who used the city's public workforce system in 2010 had a college degree.
Businesses benefit from the workforce development system, says Matt White, assistant commissioner of policy and planning from Small Business Services, because it connects them to qualified job candidates in a quick and cost-effective way.
Some job seekers benefit by finding work. But the quality of that work concerns some experts.The average job placement from the workforce development system pays $10 to $11 an hour, according to James Parrott, deputy director and chief economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute. That might be tolerable if placements led to promising careers. But Parrott says upward mobility is not likely. "My sense is that the majority of job placements don't have significant advancement opportunities," he said.
With so many people needing jobs, the focus has to be on placement as opposed to getting people on a career ladder, Ester Fuchs, a professor at Columbia University who helped create the city's workforce development strategy, said. The program, she added, had to concentrate on "short term training as opposed to the long-term career training."
"Demand is so high now," Fuchs said. "The general view is that we have to serve the large numbers of people who are looking for employment. And we have to work with the business who are offering jobs."
The situation, by some measures, has improved. Workforce1’s median wage of job placements increased from $9 an hour in 2009 to $10 in 2010, and 75 percent of those jobs were full-time. "We developed an expertise there," said Andrew Campbell, Brooklyn’s Workforce1 Deputy Director. Now there is a mission to place workers in jobs that pay an hourly wage of $15 or more.
Any gains, though, could be threatened by budget cuts. Parrott, White and Osterman agree that without more funding the workforce system is unlikely to help workers advance into middle paying jobs. Lack of money "hurts advancement opportunities for customers," said White. Osterman put the need for funding bluntly: "Peoples' lives and careers are at stake, and these programs are important."
Bloomberg wants to expand Workforce1, despite funding cuts, and hopes to achieve 40,000 new job placements in 2012. The city reported 24,701 Workforce1 job placements last fiscal year, up from 17,218 in 2007. Recently, however, those numbers were called into question.
Seedco, a nonprofit, runs both the Upper Manhattan and Bronx Workforce1 centers. "In at least 400 cases in three months, [staff members at a job center] had taken the history of jobless clients, changed dates and salaries, and claimed past employment as a job found, " Michael Powell of the Times wrote. In response, the city invalidated 44 percent of this year's Seedco job placements. The investigation is ongoing.
Fake jobs aside the question remains whether the proposed 30,000 or 40,000 jobs will be good jobs? Or will they be for part-time cashiers making little more than minimum wage at a new tourism center that thrives because the dollar is weak?
The lack of skills among many job seekers and the shortage of good jobs create a grim picture. But as Sydney Fuller-Jones of Boston, who has a job and still qualified for welfare services once said, "Any is plenty in the land of none."