Is your congregation holding a Labor Day service or event?
Are you hosting a Labor Day Breakfast? Let others know about it!Celebrate the sacred link between faith, work, and justice. Invite a union member or labor leader to be a guest speaker on Labor Day weekend, or focus your Labor Day weekend service on worker justice issues.

Need ideas for a Labor Day service? Go here for our new Labor in the Pulpits resources! For more information, e-mail Cynthia Brooke at cbrooke@iwj.org.

Click here to share information about a Labor Day event you are planning.

To find out if there's already something planned in your area, click here.

This Labor Day and throughout the month of September, we take time to remember and draw strength from the struggles and victories of the workers who came before us. And as we celebrate the past, let us also honor and lift up those individuals whose labor continue to impact our lives today.

Honor and thank that special worker in your life with an IWJ Tribute Card 

Click HERE to honor a worker today!

Do you want to learn how to strengthen partnerships between religious and labor leaders? Understand the fundamentals of Direct Action Organizing? Design creative interfaith actions? Develop strategies for building your organization? Develop effective fundraising strategies? Frame the message about religious values and workers rights to the media? If so, then this training is for you! More information here.

While faith leaders and members of IWJ's national staff and affilate groups flocked to Arizona to protest SB 1070, the state's draconian anti-immigrant law, IWJ affiliates across the country - in Milwaukee, Toledo, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Oakland, Charlotte, North Carolina and Albany, New York - held solidarity actions as part of the National Weekend of Prayer and Action for Immigrant Justice.

Although a judge blocked some of the law's most troubling provisions from taking effect, damage has already been done - reports of wage theft have spiked, leaving far more work to be done. The preliminary injunction "in no way changes the fact that we need comprehensive immigration reform," said IWJ's Executive Director Kim Bobo in a national press conference on the issue. (Read Kim's assesment of the moral and organizational leadership the Unitarian Universalists provided in Arizona. And see the extensive media coverage of IWJ's role in the protests against SB 1070.)

Thanks to the support of individual donors like you and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program we were able to raise $9,997 over the last two weeks to fund on-the-ground training of IWJ-affiliated organizers from states where harsh immigration laws are being considered.

Interfaith Worker Justice released a new report, "A Fall from Grace: Workers' Rights Abuses at Ascension Health's Michigan Operations," documenting problems workers are experiencing and a pattern of anti-union behavior among management at three Michigan hospitals affiliated with Ascension Health System.

This report is fundamentally about three Ascension hospitals in Michigan refusing to respect workers' rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining. This is in direct opposition with clear Catholic social teaching. The patterns of anti-union behavior and worker disrespect demonstrated in this report represent a fall from grace.

The Interfaith Worker Justice delegation calls upon Ascension Health to insist that its affiliated hospitals respect the rights of workers to organize, approach collective bargaining in good faith and in a constructive spirit, and abide by the process for unions in Catholic health care institutions outlined by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

A full copy of the report and attachments can be downloaded here.

Save the date for IWJ's 15th Anniversary Conference to be held in Chicago June 19-21, 2011. Come join us as we reflect, renew, and re-engage. More details and registration information to come...

2nd Annual National Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft
Thursday, November 18, 2010

Interfaith Worker Justice is organizing a National Day of Action to highlight the crisis of wage theft and ways that workers and communities have fought back. November 18 is one week before Thanksgiving, a time when we celebrate our plenty at feasts throughout the nation. But workers who have had their legal wages stolen will not be putting turkey on their family table this season.

We are urging worker centers, labor unions and worker advocates throughout the country to organize an event on November 18, and to coordinate with Interfaith Worker Justice. We will be sending out information as the date approaches. Please contact IWJ Public Policy Director Ted Smukler (tsmukler@iwj.org).

In many industries there is a rampant crisis of wage theft. Simply put, workers are having their legal wages stolen by unscrupulous employers trying to gain an advantage over their law-abiding competitors. Visit www.wagetheft.org for more information. Click here to register to download the free Wage Theft Toolkit.

This is a period of great hope and a period of tremendous fear. We have a new administration coming to power and a newly constituted congress-and many people of faith and conscience have great hopes that government can stand up again for workers and their families and communities. Our faith traditions demand justice for workers and the poor.

The economy is in deep distress. Thus far, the government has focused on bailing out large banks and investment firms. But we know that workers have been suffering long before the current stock market meltdown, even while hedge fund managers and investment banks were giddy over their huge earnings. Low -wage workers in particular have long seen their standard of living decline. Interfaith Worker Justice calls on the incoming congress and administration to put the needs of workers and their families at the forefront of plans and programs to repair and stimulate the economy. See the Congregational Toolkit on Unemployment and the Economic Crisis.

IWJ's New Anthology is Out -- Order it Today!

A Worker Justice Reader: Essential Writings on Religion and Labor, which Thomas Massaro of Boston College calls a "major contribution," is hot off the presses from Orbis Books! The first volume ever to bring together the key religious texts on worker justice, it will be a vital resource for seminaries, congregational study groups, social justice committees, labor unions, and beyond.

You can order it online or by calling 800-258-5838 (use code WJR for FREE shipping), or ask your local bookstore to order it (ISBN 978-1-57075-875-1)!

"How relevant could our churches become if our ministers learned to preach with the Bible in one hand, and this Reader in the other?" --Miguel A. De La Torre, Iliff School of Theology

"This splendid reader on interfaith worker justice is informative, accessible, and compelling, featuring a welcome combination of retrospective and forward-looking contributions." --Gary Dorrien, Union Theological Seminary

To explore incorporating the Reader into your curriculum, contact Meg Koach at (773) 728-8400, ext. 38.

NOW AVAILABLE!

Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid -
And What We Can Do About It
By Kim Bobo

In what has been described as "the crime wave no one talks about," wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States ever year. Between two and three million workers are paid less than the minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors when they are really employees, allowing employers to shirk their share of payroll taxes and to illegally deny workers overtime pay. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business- funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal 19 billion dollars in unpaid overtime. The scope of these abuses is staggering, and in response, activists, unions, and policymakers are beginning to take notice. Nationally-recognized social justice activist Kim Bobo's Wage Theft in America is an incisive handbook for activists, organizers,workers, and concerned citizens on how to prevent the flagrant exploitation of America's working people. Bobo offers a sweeping analysis of the crisis, citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers. She then offers concrete solutions, with special attention to what a new Presidential administration can do to address one of the gravest issues facing workers in the 21st-century.

See what others say:

"Kim Bobo has written an excellent and informative book on one of the most pressing issues facing millions of hardworking Americans. She offers bold, practical, and progressive solutions for how policymakers and advocates can end the growing crisis of wage theft in America."

-Senator Edward M. Kennedy

"Wage Theft in America sheds light on a widespread problem that many are not aware of. Anyone who works for a living or knows someone who does should read this."

-Bishop Gabino Zavala, Archdiocese of Los Angeles

"This is a powerful, timely, and enormously important book for the religious community, social justice organizers, and all who care about justice in the workplace."

-Rev. Nelson N. Johnson, executive director, Beloved Community Center, Greensboro, North Carolina

Order your copy HERE