Religion Plays Ongoing Role as Ally to Labor

0

The spartan offices of the Healthcare Action Campaign look similar to the temporary digs politicians set up when running for office: bare floors, stacks of literature and an assortment of maps and boards on the walls.

Among the adornments at the Service Employees International Union’s offices is a massive map of the Los Angeles region, with small pins representing nursing homes targeted for organizing and red dots representing nearby Catholic churches.


The connection?

The churches served as critical meeting places during a campaign the union waged over the past year to organize certified nursing assistants and other workers at the county’s hundreds of nursing homes.

But the Catholic church’s involvement in the labor campaign is far from unique, nor is the involvement of other churches from other denominations. The map is symbolic of the clergy’s widespread engagement in organizing health care workers in Los Angeles.

“From the cardinal down to the priests and the parishioners the church played a role,” said John Delloro, an organizer for SEIU Local No. 399, the union’s local for Southern California health care workers.

And it did not just involve nursing homes.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, for example, is widely credited with helping bridge a gulf between the large Catholic Healthcare West hospital system and the unions targeting its nurses and other workers for membership, encouraging discussions and recommending mediation.

The result was a groundbreaking accord early this year between the Catholic hospital system and the SEIU and the California Nurses Association that gave the unions greater access to organize workers in exchange for such concessions as calling off a publicity campaign attacking the system.

“It was very helpful in assisting us in working through the processes that lead to the drafting of the agreement,” said Joyce Hawthorne, CHW’s vice president for marketing and communications for Southern California.

Mahony has had a long history of supporting labor, dating back to the 1970s when he worked in Fresno and developed a friendship with labor leader Cesar Chavez.

Most recently the cardinal offered remarks during his annual Labor Day liturgy that said labor unions “play a critical role” in improving job conditions, citing home care workers among others.

That kind of leadership has allowed various pastors and priests to involve themselves in the labor movement, including Father Joe Tobin, associate pastor of St. Mary of Assumption Church in Whittier.

Tobin has offered the invocation at various labor meetings, while his church was among those where nursing home workers met.

“In Latin America they say the priest has to get out of the sanctuary. The issues are real clear, like the living wage,” he said. “I do believe that.”

But the Catholic Church, while the largest, is not the only one that has made labor issues a priority. So have various Protestant denominations, as well as Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and other religious bodies.

Much of that has come through an organization called Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, or CLUE, a non-denominational group formed in 1996 during the campaign to pass a living wage ordinance in Los Angeles.

The group has only four full time staff members but counts over 300 churches as members. Among its activities have been organizing prayer vigils for hospital workers, inviting nursing home workers to speak about facility conditions at the pulpit, and rallying for county home care workers.

“I think we are making a big difference,” said the Rev. William Jarvis Johnson, a CLUE staff member and pastor of Calvary C.M.E. Church in Pasadena.

Much of the group’s work has focused on helping low-wage workers in a variety of work places, including hospitals. The idea is that if you can raise their wages, they can stop having to work two jobs and spend more time at home.

“You have to deal with the family if you are going to deal with gang violence,” Johnson said. “If you deal with parents, you can reach those children.”

No posts to display