Workers nationwide take Labor Day pulpits

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 11, 1998 by William Bole

Hundreds of workers and union leaders around the country planned to climb into pulpits Labor Day weekend to deliver talks on today's labor Struggles and the "sanctity" of work.

Congregations in some 30 cities across the nation signed-up for the preaching program, dabbed "Labor in the Pulpits," said Kim Bobo, executive director of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.

For the second consecutive year, the Chicago Federation of Labor called off its traditional Labor Day parade to work overtime on the weekend worship services, said federation president Don Turner.

"There is a natural connection between religion and labor," said Turner, whose organization is helping to pair union leaders and congregations and promote other interfaith events. "There's a common set of values. We talk about the dignity of work and just wages and the ethical obligation to help the poorest in society."

In the largest effort of any city, more than 100 Chicago-area churches, synagogues and mosques tailored their services to the labor theme, said the Rev. Richard Bundy, director of the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues.

John Sweeney, president of the national AFL-CIO, in Washington, was scheduled to speak from the pulpits of Bundy's New Faith Baptist Church in Matteson, Ill., and Holy Name Cathedral, the seat of Chicago's Catholic archdiocese.

Bundy said he hopes observances in black churches such as his own will mark the beginning of a "redemptive dialogue" between unions and the African-American community.

"There's been a history of exclusion" of African-Americans from certain sectors of the trade union movement, he said.

In Los Angeles, more than 50 congregations planned Labor Day weekend services featuring sermons by hotel maids, farm workers and others involved in union organizing campaigns, said Linda Lotz of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, an interfaith group. The labor message will go out to congregations in some of the Los Angeles area's poorest sections, as well as the richest, including Beverly Hills, Lotz said.

In Siler City, N.C., poultry workers will tell at least 10 congregations of their struggles for decent wages and working conditions, according to Jerry Taylor, a minister in the Churches of Christ, a loosely organized evangelical denomination, and director of the North Carolina Poultry Justice Alliance.

In its second year, "Labor in the Pulpits" is unabashedly pro-union. "It makes perfect sense," said M.J. Carlson, communications director of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce. "Chicago is a very large union town."

Asked if the chamber plans to request equal time in the pulpits, Carlson said, "It would be interesting if business leaders were involved as equals."

Not a chance, said Bobo of the national interfaith committee, which coordinates "Labor in the Pulpits" with the national AFL-CIO. From her perspective, business does well enough on its own.

"Their story, frankly, is getting out a lot more than the labor story. There are business pages in newspapers, not labor pages," Bobo said.

Echoing the sentiment, Chicago's Bundy said low, wage workers in particular "need to have their story told. The church is one place where they can do that) He added, "you hear a lot about high-skilled, college-educated workers. But there are a lot of blue-collar workers who are struggling and on the margins."