Ethics Daily, Labor Day

Also from Right Democrat:

Writing at Ethics Daily www.ethicsdaily.com, Chris Sanders argues that organized labor is still alive and well:

"Labor Day is coming up. In the United States, as with most legally mandated Monday holidays, in the minds of most it has lost any inspirational significance and has become just another three-day weekend.

In fact, its forgotten significance is buried deeper than the other Monday holidays. Many people who can tell you what Memorial Day and Veterans Day mean will be enjoying their Sept. 1 cookout without a clue what Labor Day means. (If this is you, a hint--it has something to do with unions.)

Labor will get its annual ink this Labor Day weekend, in a theme echoed over the 20 years I've been in the labor movement. The articles read like obituaries. They'll begin like this: "The American labor movement, like the old gray mare, ain't what she used to be. Down from a high of 35 percent of the workforce to less than 8 percent, labor is on its last legs."

Sorry to digress, but if unions are all but interred, if organized labor is so 20th century, so backward as to be irrelevant in the global economy, why all the flap over the Employee Free Choice Act?

This proposed legislation may not yet be on your mind. But if your state is a political battleground this year, you're seeing and hearing radio and TV ads in heavy rotation attacking unions and union friendly politicians. The over-the-top media spots feature Sopranos-style thugs and talking ballot boxes.

What's it all about? In short, big corporate interests are worried that the next government will amend labor law in 2009 to help workers who want to choose a union and rebuild America. For more, go to www.ufcw.org or www.americanrightsatwork.org.

It's why Walmart is schooling its management to preach voting against Democrats in the November election. With a new government and a new labor law, Walmart is scared its workers might get a shot at a voice on the job. So, no matter what the pundits say on Labor Day, the reports of labor's death are greatly exaggerated.

We aren't dead, not by a long shot. I'm with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, with over a million members in the U.S. and Canada. At our convention in Montreal last week, I spoke about my Christian calling and the work the union has to do.

Here's what I said:

"I'm a Christian, I know something about calling. A calling is a voice you hear with your heart, that you feel deep inside, when you're so inspired that you know it comes from above. Consider these heartfelt words from the Bible. 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and the Spirit has anointed me to preach good news among the poor, to let the oppressed go free, to make the world better this year.'

"That's Jesus, speaking about his calling, a calling to a mission. It's a mission that belongs to all who believe--Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and beyond. You know what a mission is. It's more than your job description. It's bigger than your To-Do list. It's as big as the Montreal sky. It's to protect human rights and human dignity, to fight poverty, to speak out when no one else will--or can. It's to form that thin line against greed and injustice, to do, as the Apostle says, the work of love.

"Yes, we have some work to do. For the work of love is the work of change. We've been called to bring change. As Gandhi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world. Change isn't easy. Change isn't simple or obvious. It's just essential, right here, right now."

My paraphrase of Jesus' "Nazareth Manifesto," Luke 4:18-19, touched a deep place in the convention delegates' hearts. They resonated with the nexus between their high calling and the calling to something higher. The time is right for labor people who believe and believers who care about the struggles of people who labor to organize together, united as one in one cause.

As a Monday holiday, Labor Day is a paid day off. It's time, to echo Martin Luther King's words, for Labor Day to be a day on, not a day off.

Labor Day was born during the Industrial Revolution in the struggle for an eight-hour day. Eight hours, not 10 or 12 or more, became the norm for work, allowing people time to rest, take care of families and worship.

Eight hours became the norm, not through normal evolution or owner enlightenment, but when workers and their unions literally shed blood to secure their children's future. We today are their literal and spiritual children, and Labor Day is their legacy and our responsibility. It's a day on, not a day off, as we continue to stand up on the job.

No, organized labor in America isn't dead. American unions are uniting with labor globally to engage global corporate power. Unions like the UFCW are organizing and growing everywhere, because working people come together in tough economic times.

Unions are finding their spiritual center and bringing that light out from under the bushel for the world to see. Let's do it together.

Chris Sanders is executive assistant to the president and general counsel for Local 227 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, representing working people across Kentucky and Southern Indiana. Active at Highland Baptist Church, he plays rock guitar and leads worship at the Friday church service."

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=10934

As Chris Sanders mentioned, there has been a strong connection between labor unions and religious groups as both work together to build strong families and communities. Listed below are statements of various faith communities on worker's rights.

Baptist Churches:

"We reaffirm our position that workers have the right to organize by a free and democratic vote of the workers involved. This right of organization carries the responsibility of union leadership to protect the rights of workers, to guarantee each member an equal voice in the operation of its organization, and to produce just
output labors for income received."
— American Baptist Churches Resolution, 1981

"We recognize the right of labor to organize and to engage in collective bargaining to the end that labor may have a fair and living wage, such as will provide and culture."
- Southern Baptist Convention

Catholic Church:

"In the first place, employers and workmen may themselves effect much in the matter which we treat-(saving the workers from being ground down with excessive labor). The most important of all are workmen's associations...but it is greatly desired that they should multiply and become more effective.
- Pope Leo XIII

"What is to be thought of the action of those Catholic industrialists who even to this day have shown themselves hostile to a labor movement that we ourselves recommended?"
- Pope Pius XI

"Among the basic rights of the human person must be counted the right of freely founding labor unions. These unions should be truly able to represent the workers and to contribute to the proper arrangement of economic life. Another such right is that of taking part freely in the activity of these unions without fear of reprisal."
— Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council, 1965

Church of the Brethren:

"Laborers are always to be regarded as persons and never as a commodity. Industry was made for man, and not man for industry. Employees as well as employers have the right to organize themselves into a union for wage negotiations and collective bargaining."
- Brethren Service Commission, Church of the Brethren

Congregational Christian Churches:

"We stand for the replacement of the autocratic organization of industry by one of collective effort of organized workers and organized employers."

The Disciples of Christ:

"Be It Resolved by the International Convention of the Disciples of Christ:

That It is our conviction that workers should have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist in forming labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing and to engage in such activities as are within the limits of Constitutional rights for the purpose of bargaining with employers and other mutual aid protection."

Episcopal Church:

"We reaffirm the right and desirability of workers in the United States to organize and form unions. ...We decry the growing wage of anti-unionism mounting in the nation today which asks people to forget the struggles that led to this form of negotiation as a just way to settle differences."
— Urban Bishops Coalition of the Episcopal Church, 1982 (when it was a lot more orthodox than it is today)

Evangelical and Reformed Church:

"In order that the Christian principles of respect for personality, establishment of brotherhood, and obedience in the revealed will of God may find more adequate expression in the economic order, we commit our selves to work for ...the recognition of the right of employers and workers to organize for collective bargaining, as a step toward the democratic control of industry for the good of
society."

Jewish:

"The same rights of organization which rest with employers rest also with those whom they employ. Modern life has permitted wealth to consolidate itself through organization into corporations. Workershave the same inalienable right to organize according to their ownplan for their common good and to bargain collectively with theiremployers through such honorable manes as they may choose."
-Central Conference of American Rabbis

Lutheran Church:

"We are convinced that the organization of labor is essential to the well being of the working people. It is based upon a sense of the inestimable value of the individual man."
- United Lutheran Church in America

"It is the right of every man to organize with his fellow workers for collective bargaining through representatives of his own free choice. It is the duty of both management and labor to accept and support conciliations and arbitration in industrial disputes."
- Board of Social Mission and the Executive Board of the United Lutheran Church
in America.

Methodist Church:

"We stand for the right of employees and employers alike to organize for collective bargaining and social action; protection of both in the exercise of their right; the obligation of both to work for the public good."
- The General Conference of the Methodist Church

"Collective bargaining, in its mature phase, is democracy applied to industrial relations. It is representative government and reasoned compromise taking the place of authoritarian rule by force in the economic sphere. In its highest form it is the Christian ideal of brotherhood translated into the machinery of daily life."
- General Board of Christian Education of the Methodist Church

Presbyterian Church:

"Labor unions have been instrumental in achieving a higher standard of living and in improving working conditions. They have helped to obtain safety and health measures against occupational risk; to achieve a larger degree of protection against child labor; to relieve the disabled, the sick, the unemployed; and to gain a more equitableshare in the value of what they produce."
-Board of Christian Education, Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

"The right of labor to organize and to bargain collectively with employers is clearly an inalienable right in a democracy, and has so been recognized by our government."
-Synod of Tennessee, Presbyterian Church of U.S.A.