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Winter 2009 Faith Works

Issue

Contents


Standing Up for Justice by Sitting In

In December, the workers at the Republic Windows and Doors company in Chicago made national headlines when they staged a factory sit-in, and IWJ’s Chicago affiliate, Arise Chicago (until recently known as the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues), was at the epicenter of this historic event.

The workers at Republic Windows and Doors, after suffering with a company-sponsored union, joined the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1110 about three years ago. The union leadership expected a tough fight when the contract came due in May of 2008 and contacted Arise Chicago for support from the religious community. Soon thereafter the workers stormed the manager’s office and got the contract they wanted. Then, on December 2, the workers learned that their plant was scheduled to close in three days time because the Bank of America, despite being a recipient of government bailout funds designed to encourage lending to credit-starved businesses, refused to extend additional credit to Republic Windows and Doors so that it could pay its workers. The workers were being denied their 60-day pay and health insurance as required under the WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification), as well as their accrued vacation.

Further, Republic Windows and Doors received more than $10.4 million in support from Chicago taxpayers in order to keep jobs in Chicago through 2019. In October, the company’s leaders had shared a timeline with the bank for closing the factory, but never mentioned a word to workers. Meanwhile, the wife of the CEO purchased a similar manufacturing plant in Iowa and the Chicago workers noted that equipment and inventory was being moved out of their plant.

On December 5, two days before Arise Chicago demonstrated with the Republic Windows Workers outside the Bank of America, the workers announced that they would occupy their factory, with millions of dollars of inventory and machinery still in the plant. With less than 15-hours notice, over 250 supporters joined the Arise Chicago-sponsored prayer rally outside the plant the next day.

Workers and their supporters held signs pointedly saying to the Bank of America: “You Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out.” National media, including CNN, MSNBC, Time, and the New York Times, swarmed the factory for hourly updates. Arise Chicago organized daily prayer rallies, politicians lined up to support the workers, and the city, county, and state governments threatened to cease doing business with the Bank of America.

In town for a scheduled meeting, IWJ’s board of directors joined Arise Chicago for the December 9 prayer rally. It was an especially poignant moment for the workers, as the national media turned their attention that morning to the scandal surrounding Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, leaving the workers to feel abandoned and vulnerable. The arrival of the clergy reassured them. After the outside rally with hundreds, about two-dozen clergy entered the plant for private prayer with the workers and their families. One IWJ board member later reported, “I haven’t felt anything like that since the Civil Rights Movement.”

After occupying the plant for six days, Republic workers were offered a full $1.75 million settlement. Four days later Arise Chicago hosted the workers’ victory celebration with a dinner, slide show, music, and a program with top union, political, and community leaders from across the city.

“It has been said that God created the world in six days,” reflected Rev. C.J. Hawking, the Executive Director of Arise Chicago. “These workers, too, have created history and inspiration in just six days.”

The Republic workers have since gone on a national “Resistance and Recovery” tour to tell their story, seek support for their bid to keep the factory open, and meet other workers impacted by the economic crisis. A “Live Book” project chronicling their struggle can be found at http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?cat=27.

Smithfield Workers Unionize

Despite what has been called “one of the longest, most bitter anti-union campaigns in modern U.S. labor history,” workers at Smithfield Foods’ notorious Tarheel, North Carolina plant made a powerful statement on December 11 when they voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

Their victory, writes labor journalist David Bacon, “was the product of an organizing strategy that accomplished what many have said that U.S. unions can no longer do – organize huge, privately owned factories.” Workers centers played an important role in this turn of events. The UFCW established a workers center in nearby Red Springs, North Carolina, holding classes on English and worker rights.

Churches were also essential. The union, Bacon notes, “organized a permanent coalition with churches and community organizations, not just a temporary arrangement of convenience. It became part of workers’ lives. They met in its office, took English classes there, and marched in demonstrations for civil rights. And that coalition was able to turn the company’s anti-labor activity against it, exposing its record in the place where Smithfield was most vulnerable – in the eyes of consumers.”

“Without pressure from workers and their communities,” Bacon observes, “Smithfield had no motivation to reach an agreement on a fair election process.” “The election result,” he concludes, “was the product of a long-term organizing effort and commitment. Smithfield workers and the UFCW have shown that with a similar commitment, organizing is possible, no matter how big the plant or anti-union the employer.”

Bacon’s article can be found online at www.prospect.org/c/articles?article=unions_come_to_smithfield.

Making It Plain - The Day After: Hopes and Struggles

by Kim Bobo

Wednesday night, the day after the November 4 election, I struggled to get into my church for choir rehearsal. Families were lined up, snaking down the street, trying to sign up for a $20 “wish list” Christmas present for their children, a program coordinated by the soup kitchen that shares my church’s storefront property in Chicago. People who had been standing in line for hours were reluctant to let me in the door, fearful I was cutting in line.

Despite how excited many of us are about the prospect of a new president who is grounded in community organizing and publicly committed to addressing the concerns of working families, and how proud we are of the willingness of the nation to elect its first African-American president, the challenges facing working families are daunting. The last several unemployment figures reveal the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month. 1.2 million jobs were lost in the first 10 months of 2008, and the figures are expected to get worse throughout 2009. Income disparity between the highest-paid workers and the lowest-paid workers is at record levels. Millions of families are losing their homes to foreclosure, and those of us with some retirement savings are afraid to open our statements.

So the excitement and sense of new possibilities is tempered by the struggles of working families.
In light of both the prospects for change and the challenges facing workers, the work of Interfaith Worker Justice is more important than ever. Although I can’t predict exactly what the coming years will bring for our work, it seems clear that our work and role are critical. In no moment in history has the role of the religious community been more important for lifting up and helping set the priorities of the nation.

With your help, Interfaith Worker Justice will be urging the new president and Congress to:

American workers are the backbone of our congregations and the backbone of this economy. Workplace issues may not be the first ones that the new president addresses, but it is our job to make sure they’re not the last.

If you didn’t contribute to IWJ in 2008, consider starting 2009 off right. Interfaith Worker Justice depends on the support of Faith Works readers. Please fill out and send in the form on p. 15 or make a gift online now at www.iwj.org.

Please pray for our nation’s new leadership and for the work of Interfaith Worker Justice.

Immigration Raids on the Rise: Catholic Bishops Issue Challenge

The past several months have seen three of the largest workplace immigration raids in U.S. history. In May, the rural Iowa town of Postville was convulsed when 900 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stormed a kosher meatpacking plant and arrested 389 workers. In August, ICE agents descended on an electrical equipment factory near Laurel, Mississippi, detaining nearly 600 workers. And in October, the scene was repeated in Greenville, South Carolina, where 330 workers were swept up at a chicken-processing plant.

The humanitarian costs of the raids, according to a statement issued in September by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, were “immeasurable and unacceptable in a civilized society.” Children were separated from their parents for days. Those arrested were not immediately afforded the rights of due process. And local communities were, in the words of John C. Wester, bishop of Salt Lake City and chairman of the Committee on Migration, “disrupted and dislocated.” These raids, he said, “strike immigrant communities unexpectedly, leaving the affected immigrant families to cope in the aftermath. Husbands are separated from their wives, and children are separated from their parents. Many families never recover; others never reunite.”

The bishop called on the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is an agency, on President George W. Bush, and on then-candidates John McCain and Barack Obama to “reexamine the use of worksite enforcement raids” as an immigration-enforcement tool. He noted that immigrants “who are working to survive and support their families should not be treated like criminals.”

Yet that is exactly how the workers there have been treated and made to feel. The majority of the immigrant workers caught up in the raid were taken immediately to a holding facility in Louisiana. ICE released a number of women, some of them pregnant, on “humanitarian” grounds. But many of them were shackled with ankle bands equipped with electronic monitoring devices (pictured below). Several expressed their humiliation and shame – not to speak of their physical discomfort – at having been branded this way. For days, one of them told IWJ, she avoided going out in public or to the grocery store. “It makes me look like a criminal, like a dangerous person,” she lamented. “I’m not dangerous.”

This woman explained that she had come to the United States out of sheer desperation. She said she was unable to feed her children in her home village in Mexico. Now, with deportation imminent and no means to pay her bills, she and her coworkers were facing a further harrowing fate.

Immigration raids, even large, media-covered ones, are selective and symbolic in nature. They are orchestrated to send a political message that the government is willing and able to enforce the law. But why penalize the least among us—hardworking people who earn very little and endure some of the harshest conditions in the American workplace? The Postville and Laurel plants both have long histories of taking advantage of their workers. Iowa’s attorney general recently filed charges against the Postville meatpacking plant for more than 9,000 labor violations. In July, religious and labor leaders joined more than a thousand marchers in the town to show solidarity with those seized in the ICE raid. (See “Marching for Immigrant and Worker Rights” in the Summer 2008 Faith Works.)

Indeed, religious communities have been playing a pivotal role in the aftermath of these raids. Catholic parishes have been safe havens for families scrambling to feed their children amid the turmoil. Immaculate Conception Church in Laurel and Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Hattiesburg worked virtually round-the-clock to feed and provide for the affected families. MPOWER, IWJ’s Mississippi affiliate, has been right there alongside them.

To remedy what the U.S. bishops call “the failure of a seriously flawed immigration system,” they “urge our elected and appointed officials to turn away from enforcement-only methods and direct their energy toward the adoption of comprehensive immigration reform legislation.” That is now up to the new administration and to Congress.

The full text of the USCCB statement can be found at www.usccb.org/comm/ archives/2008/08-130.shtml.

IWJ’s Board of Directors has recently issued its own statement on immigration raids. For the text, see page five.

Stop Workplace Immigration Raids Now

Interfaith Worker Justice Board of Directors Policy Statement

Interfaith Worker Justice categorically opposes all immigration raids at workplaces across the United States. These raids target racial and ethnic groups that appear to be “foreign” and are blatantly discriminatory; tear families apart, often leaving children without parents or caregivers; impoverish entire communities; undermine basic civil liberties; deter workers from reporting serious workplace abuses, including health and safety violations and theft of wages by unscrupulous employers; and do nothing to fix a broken immigration system. In the language of war, these impacts may be seen as “collateral damage,” the unfortunate side effects of enforcing the law. But these raids are an affront to human dignity, a totally disproportionate response to the concern and need to enforce immigration laws, as flawed as they are.

We understand that many people of good will are troubled about the issue of immigration, given the problems native-born workers face in today’s workplace, including job insecurity and a downward push on wages and benefits. Interfaith Worker Justice is dedicated to organizing the religious community to support the rights of all workers, particularly those earning low wages. When our government actively generates fear and havoc among immigrant workers and their families, fuels the fires of bigotry and turns groups of workers against each other based on race, ethnicity and immigration status, we are all diminished.
      
As people of faith, we recognize and honor the social and economic contributions made by immigrant workers, regardless of their national origin or immigration status. In order to promote human dignity, the civil and workplace rights of all workers must be upheld. From placing food on our tables, making our clothes, or caring for our sick, immigrant workers provide many of our daily needs. While we rely on their work, we allow immigrant workers to be denied basic rights because of their legal status. While many live and work without legal documentation – there are an estimated 12 million undocumented people in the U.S. – legal residents and naturalized citizens also experience discrimination. We have even witnessed some employers using threats and intimidation to undermine organizing efforts by undocumented workers.

Workplace raids are not carried out to apprehend identified law breakers, as is sometimes claimed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). ICE agents, often wielding assault rifles, sweep into workplaces and detain hundreds of employees – nearly 600 at a recent raid in Mississippi alone. These raids can only be seen as attempts to terrorize immigrant communities and to score political points. The raids violate basic human rights and offend deeply held American and faith values, such as family unity, welcoming immigrants, and the value of work.

It is time for these raids to stop. Interfaith Worker Justice condemns all workplace immigration raids, and calls for an immediate moratorium on all such raids. IWJ calls on Congress and the President to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Comprehensive immigration reform must aim to provide full and equal protections of employment and labor laws, civil liberties and civil rights for all workers in the U.S. Reform should work to remove economic incentives for the exploitation of immigrant labor and strengthen requirements to fairly consider hiring native-born workers. Permanent status must be favored over temporary status, and families must be valued and allowed to remain intact.

Students of Conscience

In November, a group of Interfaith Worker Justice staff and students voyaged to Columbus, Georgia, to participate in what has become the largest annual gathering of religious activists in the country, the weekend-long vigil calling for the closing of the School of the Americas (SOA).

Since its formation in Panama in 1946, the SOA (now officially known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, commando and psychological warfare, military “intelligence” and interrogation tactics.

Graduates of the SOA have consistently used the skills learned in Georgia to wage war against educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred and forced to flee their country by those trained at the SOA.

Peaceful protestors have gathered outside the gates of Fort Benning since 1990, the year after six Jesuit Priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were brutally murdered in El Salvador by graduates of the SOA. For IWJ, this annual gathering was an opportunity to stand in solidarity with workers worldwide.

The SOA represents two disturbing trends with regard to labor. First, the school’s graduates protect the interests of multinational corporations in Latin America through violence and terror. Trade agreements such as NAFTA, which are systematically undermining the livelihoods of farmers in Mexico and throughout Latin America, are supported by the SOA. In fact, Mexico began sending troops to the SOA in 1994, the year NAFTA went into effect. Secondly, graduates of the SOA target labor activists, union leaders and labor educators who are working to change the working and living conditions of the poor in Latin America.

IWJ Executive Director Kim Bobo spoke at the gathering on the crucial role of students in the labor movement and in the history of social change. Additionally, IWJ summer intern alums provided several workshops throughout the weekend on ways that students can become involved in the work of connecting their faith with the struggle to protect workers. IWJ’s presence encouraged students to engage in worker justice for years to come.

Fighting Wage Theft in Minneapolis

Francisco has been a carpenter for 15 years, working mainly in home construction. He grew up in Ecuador, where he wanted to become a high school teacher. “I love history and geography. But things change.”

In Minnesota, Francisco was working for a small company with a friend. He spent six months teaching his friend carpentry. The man eventually started his own construction company. Two years later, Francisco ran into his friend while he was buying supplies at a Home Depot. His friend asked Francisco to give him a hand on some jobs. “He put me to work building a home, new construction, 2,000 square feet, putting in the doors, windows, the frame of the house. I had to drive an hour and a half each way to the job – all told, I probably spent two work days just driving. It was at least 60 hours of work, and he promised me $1,500. He said he would send a check in two weeks. But after two weeks, he tells me he doesn’t have any money. Then he avoided my calls for four months. I knew him for two years, trained him. I trusted him.”

Francisco took his claim to “conciliation court.” “I was scared, shaking, being in a courtroom. I had to drive an hour to get there. But I needed my money for working.” His “friend” didn’t show up, so Francisco won a judgment. “After 10 minutes, the judge said, ‘Okay, he’s not here, you win.’ The judge gave him four weeks to pay. I said, ‘That’s good, but what am I going to do if he still doesn’t pay me?’” Sure enough, the court order did not result in Francisco getting his pay.

Francisco came into the workers center and spoke with a worker advocate. The advocate, Brian, called Francisco’s former employer, who apologized and promised to pay. Brian wrote up a contract that stipulated payment of $300 per month until the debt was paid off, plus $100 in court costs, as they had agreed to on the phone. But Francisco’s former employer never signed the contract.

This was the second time Francisco’s wages had been stolen. When he came to Minneapolis in 2001, he got hired to lay sheetrock. “These were 5’ 8” slabs of sheetrock. It took four guys just to lift it. But we finished the job in three hours. The boss was mad, because he said, ‘I’m paying you for eight hours.’” That time Francisco estimates he was owed $300$500 in unpaid wages. Now he works for realtors, on a crew of three-four men, doing jobs for individual homeowners. “We get sent all over. We’re reading the maps, trying to find these places. If we don’t get to the location in time, we lose a day’s pay.” There is no workers compensation.

“Sometimes I feel like crying, but what can I do? We have $4,000 a month in bills. My wife works, but we have three kids – a 16 year old girl and two boys, 15 and 12. We weren’t able to buy the kids a computer. Sometimes we can’t even buy them shoes. This is Minnesota, so the priority is to pay the gas company and keep heat in the winter, and buying food. But I love what I do. You have to do what you love – I learned that from the Greeks.

“My youngest son wants to be a police man. The 15-year-old wants to be an architect. I tell him, ‘You design it, I’ll build it.’ My daughter wants to be a doctor. We try to survive, do the best for the kids. That’s the life.

“I’ve always been active in the community, since I was in third grade in Ecuador, when I collected 10 cents a week to help kids go camping. When I lived in New York City in the 1990s I worked for immigration reform with an organization there. We went to Washington, D.C. four times to talk with members of Congress. I got to meet Congressman Luis Gutierrez from Chicago.

“I had a friend who died in an immigration detention center in Ramsey County (Minnesota). She fell and wasn’t sent to the hospital for eight hours, never got the medication she needed. I organized around her case. I went to an immigration conference in Chicago.

“It’s great to have Workers Interfaith Network and the worker center. We learn about our rights, and stop being scared, because we know we’re not alone. Coming here is like coming to my family – a place to be safe.”

Student Internships Available!

Do you know a graduate or undergraduate student looking for a meaningful summer internship that explores faith and worker justice? Direct them to Interfaith Worker Justice!
Student participants will:

We encourage IWJ affiliate organizations and union partners to consider hosting a summer intern. While interning during the summer, interns have:

Internship information and applications are available at www.iwj.org/template/page.cfm?id=196.
For more information, contact Rev. April McGlothin-Eller, IWJ Student Programs Coordinator (aeller@iwj.org or 773-7288400, ext. 21).