By James B. Parks

"Before a piece of chicken arrives on your table, chicken catchers have to catch those birds and load them onto trucks for slaughter. It's a dirty, nasty job," the letter read. Workers must catch nearly 2,500 birds "before they can afford to bring home one Perdue chicken from the grocery store."

As part of the campaign, the Rev. Jim Lewis, an Episcopal priest and DPJA president, and DPJA Executive Director Carole Morrison urged shoppers to call Perdue's CEO and tell him to do the right thing and "respect the workers' right to form a union."

After being inundated by phone calls and e-mails, including consumer alerts sent out by Jobs With Justice, CEO Jim Perdue agreed to a union election. And on July 6, 69 catchers from Georgetown, Del., and Salisbury, Md., won a voice at work with the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Faith in practice: Longtime union supporter Cardinal Roger Mahony joins workers at an AFL-CIO immigration forum in Los Angeles.

Formed in 1997, the poultry justice alliance is a coalition of 17 organizations, including workers, farmers, environmentalists, civil rights activists, unions and faith-based groups. Its strength results from a long-term relationship built on mutual trust. "We put aside our own agendas and work together because we know that's the only way we're going to succeed," says Denise Crowe, organizer for UFCW Local 27.

"The chicken industry is playing the same games on all of us, so if we are going to make a change, we need all of us together," Lewis says.

Through the union's connection with the alliance, activists have created a social service center for Latinos and brought a full time lawyer on board to help immigrants—achievements that otherwise might not have happened if the union struggled alone.

At the same time, the union supports campaigns backed by the other members of the alliance. "They're our allies and we support them just as they support us," Crowe says.

Increasingly, unions are building long-term relationships with the religious community that have led to significant roles for religious leaders in such workers' struggles as the Detroit newspaper lockout, in which retired United Methodist Bishop Jesse DeWitt, president of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, has been a staunch backer of workers. Recently, the United Methodist Church, at DeWitt's urging, called for a boycott of Gannett-owned USA Today. The Free Press, owned by Knight Ridder, and the Detroit News, owned by Gannett, locked out 600 workers four years ago.

Civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, have walked picket lines with striking workers just as union members marched with them in civil and human rights demonstrations. Msgr. George Higgins, often called "labor's priest," has marched with and supported working men and women's right to form a union and been involved in many of unions' major campaigns for more than 50 years. The late Cardinal John O'Connor lent his support to many worker causes in New York City, often speaking out in support of living wages, safe workplaces and respect at work.

"Cardinal O'Connor, the son of a union craftsman, was among the most outspoken supporters of the right to organize," says Michele McDonald, president of the Federation of Catholic Teachers, an affiliate of the Office and Professional Employees. "Never once did he turn me down when I asked to meet with him regarding any union situation."

In Los Angeles, several members of the clergy spoke at the June 10, 2000, AFL-CIO forum on immigration, including Auxiliary Bishop of the Los Angeles Archdiocese Gabino Zavala; two African American pastors, Rev. Leonard Jackson and Rev. Isam Taylor; Rev. Bill Delany, a Catholic priest; Rabbi Mark Dworkin; and Cardinal Roger Mahony, who developed close ties with the Farm Workers more than 20 years ago. In April, Mahony actively supported the thousands of mostly immigrant janitors, SEIU members, striking for wages that would support their families.

"The cardinal has not been afraid to put the church's teachings into practice. He understands the interests of immigrants and of his largely immigrant church," says Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. "He knows that the best anti-poverty program for his parishioners is a union job."

In Little Rock, Ark., on May 26, 2000, the first day of a re-run union election for registered nurses at St. Vincent's Hospital, an ad signed by 51 local clergy members appeared in the local newspaper reminding the workers they have a right to choose a union. "We got 50 copies of the paper and they were all over the hospital that day," says AFL-CIO Arkansas State Director Melba Collins. That was just one of the many actions by the Arkansas Religious Committee for Workplace Fairness that led to a win for OPEIU at St. Vincent, the first private hospital in the state to be organized.

"The religious community was one of the main reasons we won," Collins says. A delegation from the committee presented a petition with 700 signatures to hospital management during the campaign.

The campaign ran for more than a year. During Labor Day weekend in 1999, 13 union members spoke in local churches, and each one touched on the issues at St. Vincent, Collins says. The first election in November 1999 was marred by employer abuses and the National Labor Relations Board ordered a new vote.

Herman Bryant, president of the Little Rock chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, helped organize African American clergy members who previously had not been involved in worker issues. He worked tirelessly to line up African American ministers to appear in 30-second radio ads in support of the nurses.

Now, with contract talks going on at St. Vincent, the religious group is still at work. They are circulating another petition, this time calling on the hospital to bargain with the nurses.

In Omaha, Neb., the UFCW joined in June 2000 with Omaha Together, One Community, a coalition of 38 religious organizations to organize more than 4,000 employees of Omaha-area meat packing companies.

There is a human cost to get the steak you eat "from the hoof to your plate," said Mark Darby, OTOC co-chair. "The cost in human terms is measured in bodies that are slowly destroyed by rapid and constant repetitive motion, by a line speed that only increases and by inadequate conditions and unsafe work practices."

OTOC congregations distributed union cards at their services in June. More than 1,000 workers signed cards in the first three weeks of the campaign.

Spreading the message

A major element in unions' outreach to the religious community is Labor in the Pulpits, a joint effort between the AFL-CIO and the NICWJ. Labor in the Pulpits links congregations with union members who come as people of faith to speak at worship services about conditions of working people and how the union movement is working for change. In 1999, 72 central labor councils and state federations participated in Labor in the Pulpits during the Labor Day weekend, more than double the number the year before. Union speakers addressed almost 100,000 people at more than 600 worship services.

The union movement also is training a new generation of religious leaders committed to worker justice. Expanding on the success of the AFL-CIO Union Summer program, in which aspiring organizers from across the country take part in four weeks of hands-on, union-community training, the federation and NICWJ this year launched Seminary Summer. After an initial one-week overview, 23 seminarians, rabbinical students and other future religious leaders are spending nine weeks in 14 cities working with unions on organizing campaigns or first-contract efforts, helping to build alliances among religious, community and union activists to support workers in their fight for a voice at work.

Planning for the future

Building on the growing number of union partnerships with local congregations, the NICWJ and the AFL-CIO co-sponsored a Religion and Labor Conference in Los Angeles last fall. Conference participants developed a new "Partnership for Worker Justice," which calls on communities of faith and unions to join together to improve conditions for workers, especially those in such low-wage and fast-growing service industries as health care and hotels. They also urged partnerships between religious groups and unions to fight for living wages and to support striking, permanently replaced and locked-out workers.

Faith works: Kim Bobo, executive director of the Interfaith Committee, says unions working with religious communities "turn faith into action."

"Working in partnership with the union movement allows the religious community to turn its faith into action," says Kim Bobo, executive director of the NICWJ.

Religious leaders provide a strong moral presence to workers' issues, Bobo says. They can address issues in a way that appeals to a broad cross section of the community that may not otherwise be willing to hear the union message; they also have experience in educating and mobilizing large numbers of people. Religious groups should be brought in early on, "rather than waiting until the last minute when you realize you need somebody to pray at a rally," Bobo says.

"There is no separation between spirituality and social action," Lewis says. "It's not enough to bury people, marry them and visit them when they're sick. This economy is hurting people and we have to call the church to action."

Fighting for a living wage

Many faith-based activists have joined with unions to support living-wage campaigns. For Sammie Moshenberg, the struggle for a living wage in her hometown of Alexandria, Va., is about doing what's morally right. "People who work should earn a decent wage, especially people who are paid with taxpayer dollars. My tax dollars should not subsidize poverty," says Moshenberg, the director of the Washington, D.C., office of the National Council of Jewish Women.

A coalition of groups, including numerous congregations, worked for two years to gain passage of a living wage in Alexandria, Moshenberg says. They held rallies and lobbied city council members to support a living wage. In June 2000, the Alexandria City Council approved a $9.84-per-hour living wage, effective July 1, for any worker on a service contract with the city. The congregations' involvement in the lobbying effort was crucial, she says. "I think it's extremely important to have religious voices raised. It adds moral credence to the position, and it reminds decision makers that worker issues are moral issues."

		From America@work, July 2000.

Acting locally and globally

Alliances between unions and faith-based groups to gain living wages across the nation are models for accomplishing a range of goals, says Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and head of Call to Renewal, a coalition of religious and community organizations that supports the struggles of the poor and oppressed.

"If we say that someone who is working hard and full-time shouldn't be poor, or unable to support a family, some alternatives must be found," Wallis says. One idea is a "livable wage" that includes affordable housing, expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, affordable health care and child care and expanded access to transportation. The religious community and the union movement could put a livable wage on the political agenda, Wallis says, the same way they put the issue of debt relief on the international agenda with Jubilee 2000/USA.

Jubilee 2000, a global, faith-based movement fighting for debt relief for developing countries that cannot meet their citizens' basic needs, "shows real signs of emerging as a new movement," Wallis says. Since April 9, when hundreds of workers joined with Jubilee 2000 activists in Washington, D.C., the campaign has gained support from a broad range of leaders and organizations.

Like Jubilee 2000, union coalition building with faith-based groups in living wage campaigns, with striking workers and the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance is laying the foundation for a new social movement committed to social and economic justice. The movement combines the moral power of both the religious community and the union movement. "All religions believe in justice," Bobo says. "So when the union movement fights for decent wages, benefits and working conditions for low-income families, it is doing the work of God."