Martin Luther King and the Memphis Sanitation Strike, 52 years later

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Fifty-two years ago today, on April 4, 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Today, the once-controversial civil rights leader who had a dream is mourned by all Americans. His contributions to making our nation more just and democratic can scarcely be exaggerated; perhaps no other American had such an indispensable role in breaking down the racist Jim Crow segregation that marred the states of the old Confederacy and even beyond. And some segments of the American populace – such as African-Americans, Christians, and pacifists – identify in a special way with King’s life and work, and feel a special loss on this day.

Among those segments is the American labor movement, especially those of us motivated by our faith to seek justice in the workplace. While many today have forgotten what brought King to Memphis that fateful spring, it was in fact a strike. Memphis sanitation workers, most of whom were African-American, had organized with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the primary labor union for state and local public employees. After two of their number were crushed to death in one of the garbage trucks, where they were sheltering from the rain, some 1,300 members of AFSCME Local 1733 launched what would be a long and bitter strike, punctuated by violence on the part of the public authorities.

Want to learn more about the strike? Check out ‘I Am a Man’: The ugly Memphis sanitation workers’ strike that led to MLK’s assassination in the Washington Post. Or better still, pick up Michael Honey’s book Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (Norton, 2007).

Kennedy Center wins taxpayer bailout – then furloughs orchestra without pay

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The Kennedy Center is earning headlines, and not in the usual good way. The Center begged taxpayers for money to tide them over through the Covid-19 pandemic, and got a sweet $25 million injection in the stimulus package to cover their bills. Within hours of winning the money, Kennedy Center management spun around and told the National Symphony Orchestra members they are to be sent home without pay. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), their union, says this is illegal and is defending their contract in court. I’ve heard a story much like this before and it ends badly for Kennedy Center management: see Matt 18:22-34 for details.

FLOC scores win against guest worker exploitation

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The H2A guest worker program allows American growers to import guest workers from abroad. The law spells out a lot of rights that these guest workers are due: the sponsoring employer is supposed to provide transportation, housing and meals in addition to the wage promised. However, guest workers are subject to deportation if they displease their sponsor — so as FLOC (the Farm Labor Organizing Committee) often explains, unless there’s a union representing them, they don’t necessarily get what they’ve been promised.

FLOC has been organizing farmworkers at OJ Smith Farms, a North Carolina tobacco grower employing workers recruited by labor contractor Salvador Barajas. Barajas recruits guest workers for several North Carolina farms, and these growers have failed to keep up their end of the bargain. FLOC has been demanding that the Department of Labor crack down on the scofflaw contractor and growers.

First, the good news — DOL finally slapped Barajas with nearly $500,000 in fines for failing to provide meals and transportation for the workers, with more than $200,000 being returned to the workers themselves. And he’s been banned from participating in the H2A program for three years.

Unfortunately, the DOL chose to let the growers go scott-free. Worse, the OJ Smith Farms apparently used the occasion to fire union supporters in an effort to thwart the organizing campaign.

FLOC is calling on tobacco companies that purchase from OJ Smith and the other growers to take action. “Companies like Reynolds American, Alliance One, and Universal Leaf all have standards they claim their growers must comply with but none of them has taken any action to support these brave workers who stepped forward and called out human right abuses in their supply chains,” said FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez. It’s high time they did.

New Orthodox Church social document embraces right to organize in unions

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A recent article in Commonweal — “The Orthodox Church & Social Teaching” — just alerted me to a new social teaching document issued by the Greek Orthodox Church in America with the approval of Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople himself. FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church is heavy on economic justice, among other themes. See, for example, paragraph 37:

Against all such practices, the Orthodox Church will insist upon the high dignity of labor and upon the inviolable sanctity of each person, and that “The laborer is worthy of his hire” (1 Timothy 5:18). Moreover, no one should labor without respite: the Church insists that a just economy or business is one that insures not only the reasonable productivity and respectable pay of workers, but their opportunities for sufficient rest from work, for recreation, and for restoration of body and soul with their families, friends, and communities. It must require of every society with the means to do so that it protect its workers—both documented and undocumented—against abuse, humiliation, neglect, and cynical exploitation. It must ask of governments that they pass laws that make it possible for employers to provide jobs but not to treat labor as a mere commodity or business expense without any special moral status. Every advanced economy must, if it would be just, make it a matter of law and custom that those businesses that enjoy incorporation in nations that provide trustworthy legal systems, functioning financial institutions, and basic civil freedoms must be willing, as part of their social compact with those nations, to comply with laws and practices that provide workers with humane conditions and living wages, and that forbid complicity in corrupt systems of structural poverty in other nations. This entails laws that ensure that, even in establishing facilities in the developing world, such businesses must be held to the same standards of conduct toward labor that obtain in the developed world; and the ability of businesses to manufacture, market, and trade goods, or otherwise to participate in the global market, must be made contingent upon just labor practices. The Church must also call for laws that do not subject undocumented workers to the terror of legal penalty when seeking redress for abuses on the part of their employers. At the same time, the Church should encourage corporations to invest humanely in depressed parts of the world, and to try to provide opportunities where none previously existed; it asks only that such businesses must be held to standards of conduct that respect the inherent dignity of every human person, and that they make their investments in developing economies in order to improve the conditions of the poor rather than to profit from their poverty.

I would have thought this would be a natural place to note the role of labor unions, but of course, not everyone thinks like me. However, paragraph 63 notes the right to organize in the context of inalienable civil rights of the human person:

Then there are those civil rights that must be regarded as the universal and inalienable possessions of all persons: the right to vote for or against those exercising political power, equal access for all persons to political representation, freedom of association, freedom of religion, the right of peaceful assembly and protest, freedom of workers to form unions…

This language in my mind recalls Gaudium et Spes, whose paragraph 68 observes:

Among the basic rights of the human person is to be numbered the right of freely founding unions for working people. These should be able truly to represent them and to contribute to the organizing of economic life in the right way. Included is the right of freely taking part in the activity of these unions without risk of reprisal.

It’s beautiful to see our brothers and sisters in the Orthodox communion reaffirming their commitment to economic justice and the right to organize in a period when both are under threat in secular history!

Georgetown steps up for service workers displaced by COVID-19

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Will other Catholic colleges follow suit?

COVID-19 shutdowns in the food service industry are devastating working families across the country. As Catholics, we believe that we will be judged on whether we have fed, clothed and sheltered “one of these least brothers of mine” (Matthew 25:31-46). That’s why we are pleased to share that Georgetown University has performed a special act of witness and charity in this time of fear, intervening to protect the livelihood of displaced campus food service workers.

When the university closed the campus to prevent the spread of coronavirus among students and staff, Aramark and Bon Appetit, the food service contractors who staff the campus cafeterias and restaurants, began laying off employees. However, the union and the students informed Georgetown administrators what was happening — and the university’s leadership took action. They met with the contractors and hammered out an agreement ensuring that these workers would be paid through the scheduled end of the semester.

This is an act of evangelization that every Jesuit, and indeed Catholic, university and college can readily follow. Unlike airlines, restaurants and sports and entertainment venues, colleges and universities have not yet suffered a catastrophic loss of revenue limiting their capacity to provide succor for their employees, whether direct or indirect.

The Catholic Labor Network has addressed letters to Catholic university presidents across the country, sharing Georgetown’s powerful example and urging them to follow suit. Would you like to help us get the word out by contacting Catholic colleges and universities in your area? Email me at [email protected] to take part in this effort.

 

Maryland pastors, parishes call on state to expand sick leave eligibility during COVID-19 crisis

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The terrible COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting the lives of Americans across the nation, but falling with special severity on low-income workers. According to the 2018 Federal Reserve Board Survey of Household Economics and Decision Making, four in ten Americans lack the savings to cover an unexpected $400 expense – yet millions of these workers stand to lose much more as COVID-19 shutters shops and restaurants, darkens casinos and stadiums, grounds airplanes, and closes offices.

While most Maryland workers enjoy paid sick leave under state law, some workers are excluded from coverage, and countless state residents who are not ill are facing an economic crisis due to emergency closures. As Catholic Christians, we know we will be judged on whether we have fed, clothed and sheltered “one of these least brothers of mine” (Matthew 25:31-46). That’s why a growing number of Maryland parishes are joining other worker and community organizations and calling for the state to adopt the following emergency measures:

  • Employees covered by the Healthy Working Families Act (HWFA), Maryland’s earned sick leave law, should be allowed to use their earned leave where they cannot work due to school closures, business closure, or because they or a family member has been quarantined by a public health official.
  • Coverage under the HWFA should extend to all temporary workers.
  • All workers whose jobs require significant public contact and those working with vulnerable populations should be immediately covered.
  • The waiting period to use sick leave under the HWFA should be eliminated, and the maximum number of days employees can use leave should be extended to 14 days.

Thanks to Fr. Ty Hullinger and the community at Baltimore’s St. Anthony of Padua Parish for leading the way with this letter addressed to Governor Larry Hogan and the parish’s state legislative delegation. We congratulate all the Maryland parishes that have taken these steps and urge others to follow their lead!

CLN Calls on Congress to Replace Lost Income for Workers Affected by Illness or Social Distancing

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Next Step: National Paid Sick Leave Policy

Legislators have proposed a growing number of legislative initiatives in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, many of them good. In this fast-moving situation, the Catholic Labor Network is mailing a special appeal to Catholic US Senators and Representatives enunciating two basic principles. First, that workers — especially low-income workers — must be made whole, whether they have lost income due to personal illness, that of a family member, or through social distancing policies to prevent spread of the virus Read more

Virginia Passes Minimum Wage Increase

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On January 21, several labor unions representing workers in low-wage occupations – notably Northern Virginia’s SEIU Local 32BJ, representing janitors, and UNITE HERE Local 25, representing hotel workers – organized busloads of union workers to travel to the state capital in Richmond to visit their legislators. Accompanying them was Father Bob Cilinski, Chair of the Arlington Diocese Peace and Justice Commission and Pastor of Nativity Church in Burke. It didn’t hurt that Fr. Bob’s parish is located in the district represented by Assembly Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, who was very interested in what Catholic Social Teaching had to offer on the issue! The day ended with a “Raise the Wage” rally where Fr. Bob offered a prayer and Rachel Laustrup of the Diocese of Richmond Office of Social Ministries, joined the group. Read more

CLN project targets wage theft in construction

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The construction industry has a problem, and the problem is wage theft. At this year’s Catholic Labor Network annual meeting – held at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in January — CLN field organizer Ernesto Galeas reported on seven months of visiting construction sites in Washington DC and Maryland, and his findings were grim. Galeas, an immigrant from El Salvador with long experience in the construction industry, reported that on fully half the sites he visited, construction workers were misrepresented as “independent contractors,” allowing their employers to duck required social security contributions, workers compensation coverage, unemployment insurance payments, and workers’ required overtime pay.

In the DC Metro area, the problem typically relies on the use of “labor brokers,” intermediaries used by major construction contractors to enjoy the benefits of payroll fraud while preserving a level of legal deniability. Under this system a labor broker recruits the workers and leases them to the contractor, as if he were running a temp agency. However, the broker in turn tells the IRS that these workers are independent contractors (or simply pays them in cash and tells the IRS nothing at all). Unfair competition from these scofflaw contractors is driving legitimate businesses to the wall. A study commissioned by the Washington DC Attorney General found that this fraud allows employers to evade between 16.7% and 40% of labor costs. Workers lose out on overtime pay and potentially much more – if they are injured on the job they have no way to claim workers’ compensation benefits.

The problem, once confined to residential construction, has penetrated the commercial construction market and escalated to astonishing levels. In two major cases recently settled by DC Attorney General Karl Racine drywall installer Rock Spring and electrical contractor Power Design paid more than $3 million in lost wages and penalties.

Galeas’ testimony moved the listeners deeply and has been covered by the Catholic press (see Wage Theft, an Underreported Crime). In the months to come, CLN will be moving beyond researching the problem and assisting workers in filing complaints for lost wages. To see Galeas’ report at the CLN meeting, CLICK HERE.

The Catholic Labor Network Annual Meeting: Video Available!

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The Catholic Labor Network annual meeting, held Saturday January 25 in conjunction with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, featured some great panelists and discussions. And this year, for the first time, we can share some of them with you! On our YouTube channel, you can check out the addresses from USCCB Labor Policy Advisor Michael O’Rourke, National Farm Worker Ministry Executive Director Julie Taylor, UNITE HERE’s Chuck Hendricks on the airline food service workers’ campaign, and Ernesto Galeas on wage theft in construction…

  • Michael O’Rourke works for the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, serving as Labor Policy Advisor. He reviewed his past year promoting Catholic Social Teaching in the nation’s capital. CLICK HERE to see O’Rourke’s address.
  • Julie Taylor leads the National Farm Workers’ Ministry (NWFM), an ecumenical organization supporting farm worker unions and alt-labor organizations. This year the CLN affiliated with NWFM. Taylor reviewed the different farm labor groups active in the United States and their current campaigns. CLICK HERE to see Taylor’s remarks.
  • Chuck Hendricks is a national leader in UNITE HERE, the hotel and food service union. He has been helping direct a national campaign of airline food service workers who are seeking a living wage and affordable health care. (The Catholic Labor Network has been organizing solidarity with these workers among Catholic audiences.) CLICK HERE to see Hendricks’s talk.
  • Ernesto Galeas is the CLN’s field representative leading our Mid-Atlantic Construction Wage Theft project. He has been visiting job sites and counseling workers denied proper wages. CLICK HERE to see Galeas’s report.