With a pile of homemade goodbye cards on his desk next to a thick stack of office supply orders that had been filled, Walter Sawyer worked his last day as a volunteer recently. After eight months of 35-hour workweeks and no paychecks, he was understandably happy to land a paying job, but not at all resentful for the time and the work he put in at the Department of Human Services office in Bangor. In fact, he said, he would miss everyone.

Sawyer went on welfare when his wife got cancer and he quit his job to take care of her. “They paid for the operation,” he said quietly, referring to the Medicaid program, and the state. “I feel that I owe them.”

Now, not only is his wife healthy again, she is volunteering across the street at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. “I look at it this way — they’re giving me free training,” Jackie Sawyer said. She got her high school general equivalency diploma through the state’s ASPIRE program, and is learning how to use computers, a skill that she wanted.

That’s what welfare’s volunteer programs are meant to do — give people the training and references that will help them get a good job. But what has worked so well for the Sawyers, who live in Bangor with children old enough to take care of themselves, doesn’t always work so well for others.

“I felt like a slave, if you want to know the truth,” said one welfare recipient. The man, who used to be a computer technician, asked that his name not be used. “I was forced to volunteer — then my car broke down. Then I said forget this. I just thought it was embarrassing, like I was a janitor but I wasn’t good enough to get paid for it. It made me feel real low.”

As welfare programs change, the challenge for DHS is to create a system that produces more “workfare” recipients who leave the program feeling like the Sawyers, who believe that it has changed their lives completely. To accomplish this, DHS officials say they have changed their emphasis from handing out checks to helping people. But some recipients say the system has only become more demanding and more intrusive, and some charge that the program is exploitative.

There are now volunteers — who aren’t really true volunteers, since they’re required to put in their time — at hospitals, hotels, town offices, churches, YMCAs and shelters, all over the state. The program is so prevalent several town general assistance directors said that it is getting more and more difficult to find placement for people, especially in more rural areas.

The volunteer program comes in the wake of federal welfare reform in 1996, which limits most recipients to five years of assistance. The Legislature passed a welfare reform bill earlier this year which redirects state money into programs for long-term training.

More than 3,000 Maine people found jobs from welfare programs last year, said Donna Greenlaw, the program administrator for the DHS Bureau of Family Independence in Bangor. There are 2,000 people in the state now who are volunteering at a nonprofit organization or doing “field training” at a private company, according to program director Judy Williams. And local general assistance programs require recipients to volunteer, too.

Balancing “volunteers” with the work force is a challenge inherent in the new system. By law, employers can’t take welfare recipients to replace current employees in order to save money.

“Our temporary program and field program workers cannot displace an existing worker, so they aren’t just pushed out,” said Williams. “Having them maintain their jobs is just as important as getting our recipients into the work force,” she pointed out.

In other areas of the country, such as San Francisco, New York and Baltimore, unions have begun to fight what they complain is “slave labor,” taking paid jobs away from others, and demanding equal pay for equal work. Maine organized labor hasn’t reached that stage, but there are rumblings of concern.

Charles O’Leary, president of the Maine AFL-CIO, said that the union has pushed for welfare recipients to be given at least minimum wage and covered by the fair labor standards act, as other workers are. “While people are generally in favor of a change in the welfare system … I don’t think the public voted to provide to businesses or municipal governments free labor,” said O’Leary.

Greenlaw doesn’t agree that the benefit is all for the companies. DHS tries to place people in organizations that have hired welfare recipients to paying jobs in the past. Its office has hired half a dozen or so, she said, who took the state exam and competed with other applicants.

“DOT [the Department of Transportation] is really screaming for women,” Gree are positions coming open. That’s a nice opportunity — $8.50 an hour with benefits is starting pay.”

Greenlaw added that in addition to the skills they can learn and the references they can get, “we believe it’s easier to find employment if you are employed,” or at least in a work environment.

People with “major barriers to employment” can get help through DHS such as counseling and medical care after abuse or for addictions, officials say. But the majority of welfare recipients are going to find themselves either guided or prodded into workfare by caseworkers.

“Of course, you’re going to run into some people who would prefer to stay home with their children, but frankly those days are gone. With time-limited benefits, we can’t just sit back and allow that,” Greenlaw said, sounding worried. “The five-year clock [until benefits are cut off] has a pretty loud tick here.”

The side effects of workfare have some people concerned. O’Leary said, “As this develops and progresses we’ll have to see what’s happening to children. If you’re a primary school child and your mother was put in for 20 hours a week, then what happens to you?”

That’s what Nancy Scanlon of Greenbush is asking. Although DHS would pay for child care, she wants to be a mother, not a volunteer. After holding a job while her 22-year-old daughter was growing up, she said, she has learned that it’s just as important for parents to be home as their children grow older.

“The last time I left a teen-ager by herself she got into enough trouble,” Scanlon said. “… The reason I waited 14 years to have my son was to be there to raise my son. Not have my daughter in day care, growing up not liking me.”

But Scanlon is required to volunteer now in order to keep getting benefits. There aren’t opportunities in tiny Greenbush, she said, so she would have to commute to volunteer — except her husband needs the car to get to work. There is no public transportation, and in the winter the hour-long drive to Bangor stretches to much more.

DHS does reimburse for transportation, 22 cents a mile.

Greenlaw said she hasn’t had trouble finding placements — in fact, she said, so many people want volunteers that “most of the time we’re scrambling trying to find people.” But it is difficult in rural areas, she said.

“The biggie with us here in Bangor is public transportation. That is a godsend. … [The placements are] a little bit more difficult for us to find, not that we can’t. A lot of times what it takes is a little bit of Yankee ingenuity,” Greenlaw said.

Scanlon said that DHS workers told her husband that he should look for jobs in Augusta or in Portland, where the unemployment rate is below the national average — not above it. “What is this, `Everyone who’s poor, raise your hands and now move to Portland’?” she asked incredulously.

Walter Sawyer has had to go far afield to get a good job. Every week he drives to New Hampshire and checks into a motel, but he is getting paid $10 an hour and full benefits. His wife said that they are very happy that he got such a good job — with four children, they desperately needed both the income and the health insurance. She said the company has an office in Waterville and may open one in Bangor. “I’m hoping not to move,” she said, “I’d like to stay right here.”

While in the DHS office, Walter Sawyer said, “I see them [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients] come in here, they have little kids, I know it’s tough …

“We used to live in Bradford, 25 miles to town, but when she [Jackie] got sick, we had to be close so she could get chemo[therapy]. Most of the jobs are in Bangor so moving to Bangor made a lot of sense.” He and his wife could take a bus to their volunteer jobs, just a few miles from their apartment. “If I was still in Bradford,” he said, and shook his head, “I don’t know — it would’ve been tough. It all depends on your situation, I guess.”

The bottom line is workfare recipients must be flexible if they are to make the most of the program. Greenlaw said that some recipients “have the mind-set of `Why don’t you just leave me alone?’ But we’re not doing anybody a service by doing that with time-limited benefits,” she said.