Reconciling Faith and Worker Justice, by Rev. Linda Olson Peebles, Sept. 6, 2009

• Listen to this Sermon: It's in the Playlist

• Back to the Sermons

Reconciling Faith and Worker Justice, by Rev. Linda Olson Peebles

        “Democracy cannot work without the units essential to its operation – families, congregations, labor unions, and organized collectives of citizens who act in public life for justice and the common good.” --Edward Chambers

        The beginnings of the tradition of Labor Day tell us a lot about the complexity of our culture’s relationship with labor – honoring it with parades and picnics, and maybe fearing it when it is organized and making demands for justice.

        Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September in the United States since the 1880s. It was conceived by some labor unions to be an American holiday that celebrates workers and provides them with a day of rest. The first Labor Day parade occurred Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. The workers' unions chose the first Monday in September because it was halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. The idea spread across the country, and some states designated Labor Day as a holiday before the federal holiday was created.

        In Ohio, where my grandfather was a proud union member in the steel mills beside Lake Erie in the first half of the 20th century, the Ohio legislature formally recognized Labor Day as a state holiday in 1890. John Patterson Green, a representative in the Ohio house and the first African American lawyer in post-Civil War Ohio, introduced a bill that established a September Labor Day in Ohio, to give recognition of industrial workers’ important contributions to Ohio's economic growth.

        Four years later, the United States government established Labor Day as a national holiday. President Grover Cleveland signed a law designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day nationwide. And this reveals something of the historic complexity of this holiday. Cleveland was not a labor union supporter. In fact, he was trying to repair some political damage that he suffered earlier that year when he sent federal troops to put down a strike by the American Railway Union at the Pullman Co. in Chicago, IL. That action resulted in the deaths of 34 workers. Those Pullman workers were black.

        Another reason Cleveland may have decided to go along with the September date, and nationalize it – was that at the same time as some states were choosing September, there were unions in the US, and around the world, who had settled on May 1 as a day of speaking up for laborers’ rights. This date became an international event following the Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket riot or Haymarket massacre). This was a disturbance that took place on May 4, 1886, in Chicago, which had begun as a peaceful rally on May 1 that year in support of workers striking to achieve an 8-hour work day, and devolved into violence. Internationally, the date of Haymarket incident was adopted as well by socialist and communist activists, and May Day became International Labor Day.

        So, Pres. Cleveland found his government and US business in an uncomfortable position. Faced with the annual commemorations of the Haymarket violence, and in the aftermath of the deaths of sleeping car workers at the hands of the US military and US Marshals during the 1894 Pullman Strike the US President put reconciliation with Labor as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the Pullman strike. So our US September Labor Day was designed to be an “approved” way to honor labor – to “appease” labor? - and it was removed from the implications and associations of the Chicago May Day events, adopted by the international labor and activist world as its Labor Day.

        The cause of recognizing labor and reconciling injustices goes on.

        Nowadays there is an organization called Interfaith Worker Justice; the local (IWJ) group is Jobs with Justice - Interfaith Worker Justice of Greater Washington. Its aim is to remind congregations to recognize the sacred work of all its members and to support low-wage workers' struggles for justice. We are a part of this year’s IWJ Pulpit Project, because “In the richest country in the world, more than two million full-time, year round workers live below the poverty line, struggling to pay for necessities such as food, housing, healthcare, transportation, and childcare. Since 1996, thousands of congregations have focused Labor Day weekend services on the injustices facing low-wage workers and the religious community's efforts to support those workers' struggles for living wages and family-sustaining benefits.”

        Ted Smukler, the Public Policy Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, wrote last year:

             When I look at the changes between the 1960s and today, I see a nation in which workers’ power has steadily eroded. When I was a kid, one adult could work as a postal clerk, social worker, machinist, teacher, or roofer and support a family. … today, it generally takes two incomes to survive. Workers are earning much less today when adjusted for inflation than they were in the early 1970s. Most “middle class” Americans find their economic security tenuous. A major illness can also leave people destitute who had previously been comfortable.

             The manufacturing sector in the US, which had been highly unionized, is decimated, as …corporations flee to parts of the world with cheap labor, low taxation and lax regulations. Service jobs—often non-union—pay many people at rates that don’t allow them to rise above poverty.

             Job security is often a thing of the past. There has been a steady decline in the percentage of workers in unions, from nearly 40% in the 1950s to about 12% today. …[non-union workers] are considered “at will” employees—we can be fired for no cause at all, simply because the boss doesn’t like us. If we try to organize with our fellow workers, we often have a big target drawn on our back. An anti-union consultant industry has grown up….specializing in teaching employers and managers how to use threats, harassment, and intimidation to keep the union out.

        And our UUA Advocacy and Witness office wants us to ponder this question, thinking about the new generation of laborers:

             Labor Day is a federal holiday. So why will 31 percent of young workers be on the job that day? That's compared with just 23 percent of workers older than 35, and it's just one of the ways young workers are struggling, according to a survey done by Working America and the AFL-CIO. We knew this economy was tough for everyone, but some things we learned from these young workers were truly shocking, especially when we compared them with what a similar group of young workers told us a decade ago.

             • 31 percent of young workers do not have health insurance. In 1999, that number was only 24 percent.

             • 36 percent of young workers worry about not being able to get a permanent, full-time job with benefits. In 1999, only 27 percent did.

             • Today, 24 percent of young workers told us their income was less than what they needed to pay the bills. Ten years ago, just 10 percent said the same.

        But perhaps most shocking is the question we didn't think we had to ask in 1999: Today, one-third of workers younger than 35 still live with their own or their spouse's parents. Those who earn less than $30,000 per year are equally likely to live with parents. That's a generation that has been prevented by economic uncertainty from reaching an independent adulthood. (And a generation of parents who never thought they'd still have kids at home.)

        I believe there is some reconciliation to do.

        Reconciling in our nation, with its ideals of equality, the difference between ideals and practice. It should not be just the rich, the banks, the owners, and the stockholders who have equal access to the benefits of “unalienable Rights”, including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” and - Reconciling in our hearts and in our sense of mission as a congregation. What connects our UU faith and principles with the continuing need for laborers to be seen and heard and find justice?

        Here are two things I want to affirm:

        First - This is a religious issue – no matter what positions you might take on unions or economic theory; no matter your politics and philosophy of the nature of the commonwealth vs. individual responsibility. All the great religions teach us – feed the poor, offer housing, care for the sick. And faithful people know that we are measured by how we treat the least powerful among us. This is the shared belief that brings VOICE together - Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement - our multi-racial organization of 45 Jewish, Muslim, Unitarian Universalist, Roman Catholic, and Protestant congregations. In the September 5, 2009, issue of the New York Times, in his article about VOICE’s efforts to gain justice for Muslim immigrants, Samuel Freedman wrote about being impressed by the multi-faith nature of VOICE :

             During the current Ramadan holiday, a delegation of clergy members including a Catholic priest, Unitarian and Episcopal ministers, two black Christian pastors and a Reform Jewish rabbi convened at the mosque to explain why [the Muslim immigrants’ plight]… has become theirs. “The Torah portion this last week told us, ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue,’ ” said Rabbi Brett R. Isserow of Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria. “The pursuit of justice is the pursuit for justice for all people.”

        Standing in solidarity with the marginalized, the powerless, the voiceless, is the deepest and most authentic of all religious values.

        And secondly - Organizing is how to work for justice, how we can stand in solidarity, and how the least powerful can gain the power to be able to take their equal place at the bountiful table of our abundant creation. Labor organizing has always been connected to community organizing. Community organizing – we do it in VOICE, Barack Obama started as an organizer, Martin Luther King was an organizer. Many of the early Civil Rights organizing actions were on behalf of laborers’ rights. And the grand tradition of community organizing, as developed by VOICE’s grandfather Chicagoan Saul Alinsky in the mid-20th century, began as a way to help bring organized labor and organized religion together for the people who were NOT organized. While it is true that one person can accomplish great things, the power of people joined together is what has created change and justice in this world.

        It is our faith that every person has worth and dignity, and that all people are our brothers, our sisters. Our faith affirms that we do not need to be afraid of facing up to the contradictions of the world as it is and the world as our values say it should be. We can reconcile work and leisure, injustice and privilege, struggle and success. Our faith empowers us to cross the barriers of class, politics, race, religious creed, and be in solidarity with laborers, with the poor, with the young, with the immigrant - to help lift up the voice of the less powerful – the people who have to work two or three jobs, the people who have no health care, the people with limited access to decent housing and education.

        That’s the Labor Day I can commit to – whether it’s in September or May, in the struggle or in the celebration – Labor Day and every day. Never turning back from the struggle, staying in solidarity with those whose voices need to be heard, pinicking and parading, protesting and speaking the truth always. Faithful support for justice!

        May we be inspired by the faithful struggles of the past and in the present. The song “Step by Step” was the rallying call of the first national mineworkers union in the 1860s – using words from that organizations’ constitution. May we always sing it together, in honor of our faithful commitment to justice for all workers.

             Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won.

             Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none.

             And by union, what we will can be accomplished still;

             Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.

Naom Chomsky on Haymarket
and Labor History