Unions Visit Churches in Blitz to Renew Ties

Trying to draw on the church-based activism that served organized workers in the 1920s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, a top union official said Sunday that the mission of labor is to become the “tool of God” to bring about fair treatment for workers.

As part of a nationwide blitz by the AFL-CIO into more than 400 worship services, union Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson told a Los Angeles congregation: “We in the labor unions want to make ourselves a tool of God to bring justice and dignity for the workers.”

Speaking to worshipers at the historic Second Baptist Church, the oldest predominantly African American baptist church in Los Angeles, Chavez-Thompson called on the congregation to get involved in local organizing efforts.

She said the clergy--in trying to help members of their congregation deal with money, housing, job security problems--face the same tasks as organized labor. She said the unions are focusing on churches because the working poor--regardless of their color or nationality--are drawn together by their religious faith.

Chavez-Thompson’s appearance at Second Baptist was one of 50 by union officials at worship services throughout Southern California Sunday. Those talks are a key part of a national strategy to enlist organized religion and to rejuvenate a labor movement whose membership was--until last year--declining steadily.

Indicative of that strategy, leaders of the Service Employees International Union asked church members at Second Baptist to sign a petition supporting the union’s efforts to organize more than 4,500 workers at the Catholic Healthcare West hospitals, the second-largest hospital group in California.

In an interview, associate pastor William Campbell said the church’s involvement in labor activities is consistent with the church’s mission.

“We have been vitally involved in the cause for social justice,” he said.

He said his church played a critical role in the newly formed Clergy and Laity United for Economic justice, an interfaith organization that led the “living wage campaign” two years ago for passage of local laws requiring city contractors to provide better wages.

Last week, the clergy and laity group joined about 70 University of Southern California students in a march supporting unionized food service and housing workers on the campus. And late last month, the group joined forces with workers in Santa Monica fighting for a union election at the Miramar Sheraton hotel.

Church and labor alliances are not new. They worked hand-in-hand during labor unrest of the 1920s and 1930s, and more recently with farm-worker movements in the 1960s. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed while in Memphis supporting city sanitation workers.

Workers may come from all races and nationalities, Chavez-Thompson said Sunday, “but faith and religion brings us all together.”

The AFL-CIO’s current church effort began about three years ago through the national Interfaith Committee for Social Justice.

Labor officials are depicting their mission as winning “dignity, fairness and justice for workers,” obtaining “living wages” and creating working environments in which employees can freely organize without fear of retribution. With that emphasis, the union is giving its message a social-justice tone that has long been the mission of churches.

“What better thing can you and God make than to bring fairness and justice to the people,” Chavez-Thompson said.

To tie that faith-based theme to local union battles, Chavez-Thompson alluded to union efforts at Catholic Healthcare West hospitals in Hawthorne and Lynwood.

“If we as workers don’t stand together and fight back at Robert F. Kennedy and St. Francis [medical centers], are we really practicing our faith?” she asked.