Labor-religious alliance

By DON McINTOSH, Staff Reporter

(Part One)

It was a startling image: Portland priest Robert Krueger, dressed in black and wearing a clerical collar, handcuffed and led away by police on Nov. 4, 1997 (see photo on this page).

His offense: standing up for striking Pueblo Steelworkers by sitting down in the lobby of their company's financial backer, Wells Fargo Bank. Unlike the 20 others arrested in that act of civil disobedience, Krueger was neither a worker, an activist, or a union official. His motive was religious principle, and in lending his moral authority to the cause, he followed a path traveled by many clergy before him.

In Portland and around the country, unions are looking to religious leaders and church members as allies in struggles for justice. Organized labor has worked with organized religion since the labor movement's beginnings, but today labor's outreach has a renewed sense of urgency.

The relationship is complex. National church bodies issue statements supporting workers' rights even as church-run hospitals shun union organizers. In state legislatures, labor lobbyists work with church lobbyists on issues of common concern. During labor disputes, unions appeal to local congregations for moral support. And individually, the two institutions overlap when union members are active in church, or religious leaders find their faith compels them to get involved in union campaigns.

Religious workers are often, through the charity work they do, in contact with the poorest. Several religious leaders interviewed for this story spoke of having their commitment to worker justice strengthened by seeing working people in soup kitchens because their wages weren't enough to meet the basics.

"We see people come into the food bank," says David Leslie, executive director of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, an interfaith group representing 15 Christian denominations. "They're working full-time, and at the end of the month, they still can't afford food for their families. Something is wrong when that's happening."

Charles Spencer, head of the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network and an activist in the Methodist church, says their exposure to unending poverty leads church groups to look to politics.

"With the growing income gap, many religious groups that do charitable work in the community are growing frustrated that they are unable even to get a Band-Aid out of Congress," Spencer said, "and they're increasingly open to systemic solutions like the labor movement."

Marilyn Sewell, senior pastor of Portland's 1,500-member First Unitarian Church since 1992, said the experience of coming to an inner-city church changed her, as every day she saw homeless people, discarded hypodermic needles, and used condoms.

"I'm in the middle of a lot of pain," Sewell said. "I cannot ignore it, so I become more and more radical."

To get to the causes, Sewell started studying economics. She began reading about class struggle. What she learned, she took to the pulpit.

"Ethically, morally, it is wrong for so few to have so much while their brothers and sisters are walking around with no food, shelter, or health care," she said.

Sewell is quick to say she's not an activist, but she uses the pulpit to prod church members to activism. Last year the church hired a social justice director and began publishing a newsletter called Steps to Justice. After the church sponsored an October teach-in on the World Trade Organization (WTO), over 100 members went to Seattle for the Nov. 30 rally and march led by organized labor.

The Nov. 30 - Dec. 3 meeting of the WTO brought labor and church groups together in an on-the-streets, public way as hundreds of Steelworkers joined hands with hundreds of church members in a call for Third World debt relief. The action was part of a church-led campaign known as Jubilee 2000, which won the endorsement of the national AFL-CIO at its convention last October. "In the last five years you can really see the expansion of religious groups working with labor," said Regina Botterill, education outreach coordinator for the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice. Her group's very purpose is to mobilize the religious community on campaigns to improve conditions for workers, especially low-wage workers. Four years ago, she points out, there were at most 12 local interfaith groups working on worker justice; today there are 52.

Now she's working with the national AFL-CIO to oversee the first "Seminary Summer," based on the model of the AFL-CIO's "Union Summer" program of organizing internships for college students. This summer, 25 seminarians and rabbinical students are participating in 10-week internships in union organizing campaigns. Half the time is spent doing outreach to religious communities, the other half directly assisting union organizers.

Another new collaboration between religious leaders and labor is the Workers' Rights Board - a voluntary body made up of religious, academic, and political leaders - that investigates worker rights abuses and applies public pressure to the culprits. In 16 cities around the country, central labor councils and chapters of the workers' rights group Jobs With Justice have formed Workers' Rights Boards. Portland Jobs With Justice inaugurated one in June, and 12 of the 58 members are from religious organizations. A rabbi and two Protestant ministers served on the board's first panel, a June 13 hearing on contract negotiations at Powell's Books.

In legislative work, when unions advocate a broad agenda of socio-economic justice, they frequently find religious groups are natural allies.

From 1987 to 1999, in her role as director of public policy for Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, Ellen Lowe often worked with organized labor at the Oregon Legislature. "My experience over the years is that organized labor, at least in Oregon, had a broader vision," Lowe said.

Lowe said unions recognized that they alone didn't have the strength or numbers to accomplish their political goals. "I never thought of Oregon as being a highly organized state. Labor in Oregon as a voice has always tried to speak to what I call 'the wider parish.'"

In the 1989 Legislature, labor worked with Ecumenical Ministries and other groups to win an increase in the minimum wage, even though only a few union workers earned wages that low.

"What brought us together was a common concern for economic justice, placing value on work," Lowe said.

The faith community and the labor community frequently overlap on an individual level. Jean Eilers, Oregon state director for the national AFL-CIO, is a good example. A devout Catholic and former nun, she draws inspiration for her union work from her spiritual beliefs. And it was as a nun that she first became involved in union politics.

Born in Portland in 1940, Eilers joined the Sisters of the Holy Child convent in 1959 and moved to Pasadena, Calif., to teach at a parochial school and care for older nuns.

Her first encounter with the union movement came in 1973 with a marathon volunteer session for the United Farm Workers (UFW), which had a history of working closely with the Catholic church. Eilers and four other nuns wrote letters, stuffed envelopes, and went door-to-door to win support for the farm workers.

Later, she did support work as busloads of UFW supporters were arrested in Fresno for violating an injunction against picketing.

"A lot of my friends went out to this field, and many were arrested ... They couldn't beat up farm workers with all these religious people in the area."

For two weeks, while clergypeople in jail fasted, Eilers fasted on the outside. When the fast ended, all of them found their commitment to the farm worker cause had deepened.

"There were about six of us who decided that teaching in these rather wealthy Catholic schools didn't seem like the mission," Eilers recalls. So the group signed on to work directly for the UFW. Eilers went to work in the union's field offices, alongside devoutly Catholic Cesar Chavez, and stayed until 1981.

That year she left the UFW, California, and the Sisters of the Holy Child.

In the 1950s, Eilers explained, Catholics who wanted to serve society joined the clergy. But after two decades of political upheaval, a vibrant civil society had developed, and were many ways to serve society. She went to work as a union organizer for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, then as a business representative for the United Auto Workers. In 1986 she returned to Oregon and went to work for the Service Employees International Union. In 1997 she assumed her current position.

All along, she kept up her religious involvement and is a parishioner at Portland's St. Andrews Church.

So when striking Steelworkers from the Oregon Steel Mills plant in Pueblo, Colorado, called a demonstration at the downtown Portland office of Wells Fargo, Eilers approached her priest, Father Krueger, and asked him to take part. Eilers was impressed when he agreed not just to take part in the demonstration, but to be arrested in the act of civil disobedience organizers had planned.

"People think unions are self-interested," says Eilers. "Workers don't get listened to because they're poor. So we're left with the church as an ally because they have credibility."

"Religious leaders can help by using their moral authority in a way no one else can," said Margaret Butler, Portland Jobs With Justice staffperson and a member of Eastmoreland Episcopal Church. "People aren't just workers; they're members of the community � With certain groups of workers it makes a huge difference."

(Editor's Note: This is part one of two. Part two will look at attempts to unionize religious institutions such as hospitals.)