wfn.org | Church urged to support workers at international consultation

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Nov. 18, 1998	Contact: Joretta Purdue*(202)546-8722*Washington
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NOTE: A photograph is available with this story.

ATLANTA (UMNS) - The church needs to uphold the worth of workers, even
though that's often not a popular position to take, according to
speakers at a global consultation.

The Rev. Gary Mason of the Forth Spring Community Center in North
Ireland used himself as an example. He heads a Methodist program to
prepare people for jobs instead of jail, and he also is a minister in
dialogue with terrorists. Working with terrorists hasn't been popular,
he noted. 

"It didn't go down well with the church," as if the church wasn't to
speak to sinners, he observed wryly.

Mason was among the church and labor representatives from around the
world who spoke at a Nov. 13-15 consultation, "The United Methodist
Church and Working People: Joining the Struggle for Workplace Peace and
Justice."

Ireland's 80 percent unemployment rate plays a part in "the troubles"
there between Protestants and Catholics, Mason said. In families where
three or more generations have been without employment, some join the
paramilitary forces, just as some urban U.S. children join gangs in
their search for identity and belonging, he said. 

He also sees parallels between the sectarianism in Ireland and racism in
the United States and other parts of the world. 

"It's a worldwide phenomenon that needs to be addressed," he said, or
"coffins will be coming out of the unemployed and unemployable."

Peace cannot exist without work, agreed the Rev. Daniel Mulunda, from
the North Katanga Conference in the Congo (formerly Zaire) and the All
Africa Conference of Churches. Marginalized people are the breeding
ground for revolution, he said.

"This is genuine peace: if every parent can feed their child," Mulunda
said. "To struggle for workers is really to struggle against
'principalities and powers,' " he emphasized, alluding to Paul's words
in Ephesians 6:12. 

In Africa, the struggle for workers is the ministry of the church and is
inseparable from the struggle for the family, he said. Mulunda urged
forgiving international debt that burdens the poor of Africa.

Because of unemployment, a new type of slavery has emerged on the
continent, Mulunda reported. Parents are sending their children, often
as young as 6 or 7 years old, to earn the living for the family because
there is no employment for older adults. Children are being recruited
with lies to become domestic slaves in other countries. If they become
sick or die during the arduous journey, their bodies are discarded and
the families never know what became of them.

The Rev. Israel Alvaran, a faculty member of Union Theological Seminary
in Manila, said Filipino labor is under siege. Five million children are
employed, but unemployment among adults is widespread. He sees a move to
"contractualization," union busting with the compliance of the
government, subcontracting, forced overtime and emigration to other
countries to seek work. Although the unions are nationalistic, economic
and political realities make this a global problem, he noted.

Alvaran works with a group trying to get cooperation among the many
unions, which are fragmented by different ideologies. The United
Methodist Church authorities are anti-union, he said, but he persists in
working with the labor organizations, not for them. 

"They are not the Messiah," he added. Church people who work with labor
are trying to educate the workers as to their rights.

One panelist, the Rev. Vasni de Almeida, who works with the landless
movement in Brazil, was denied a visa to attend the conference, but his
paper was translated and read in English. He reminded participants that
land issues in Brazil date back to the country's colonial period.
Economic problems during the 1980s forced many to leave the land, and
poverty is extreme.

Mechanization and computerization have left millions of people
unemployed in Brazil, he said, and the number continues to increase.
Many are homeless with no food, health care or education. Various
congregations have mounted local efforts to help, but there is no policy
or program tying them together, and the problems are great.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, keynote speaker
for the consultation, urged working together with other faith groups and
labor organizations to build a society that values workers.

"Someone has to make this land a land of justice," Chavez-Thompson said.
She quoted the director of a homeless shelter, who said that half of the
residents went to work every day, but their minimum-wage jobs did not
enable them to move out of the shelter. And, although the U.S. economy
is supposed to be booming, the real earnings of workers are down 12
percent since 1979, she said.

During a work action on the consultation's first day, participants were
bused to Morris Brown College. There, they joined local union people in
a sidewalk demonstration on behalf of Head Start workers, who chose
union representation in September 1997. When the workers chose the
union, the Head Start program was administered by United
Methodist-related Clark Atlanta University. Today, it is administered by
Morris Brown College, and the employees still don't have a contract.

"Together let us join in the struggle for workplace justice and peace,"
said Bishop Fritz Mutti of Topeka, Kan., chairman of the Concern for
Workers Task Force. "Our purpose is to stand in solidarity" for economic
justice, he said.

Mutti credited Jerry Meszaros, director of the Religion and Labor
Council of Kansas City, for the idea of forming the Concern for Workers
Task Force, which was eventually created by the 1996 General Conference,
the United Methodist Church's highest legislative body.

The task force, together with the denomination's Board of Church and
Society and Board of Global Ministries, sponsored the consultation,
which brought together about 175 people, most of them from the United
States.

A banquet honored retired Bishop Jesse Dewitt and the Rev. Joseph
Lowery, who retired last year as president of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. Lowery was delayed in getting back to Atlanta and
was not present when he was recognized for his relentless work for
social justice and civil rights. After marching for civil rights decades
ago, he went on to support workers and offer prayer meetings at labor
rallies and strike sites in several states.

DeWitt was awarded for his work on behalf of ordinary people. In
response, he said the consultation offered the possibility of a new
beginning in the struggle. 

When he was 12, he had to memorize the 1908 Social Creed in confirmation
class, he said. Now, 90 years since the creed was adopted by General
Conference, the church has not yet brought about the adoption of a
living wage. 

"In my community, we're still trying to get up to the poverty level,"
noted DeWitt, who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Don't give up," he advised
the consultation participants.

Art Kerschner Jr., who heads a team working on child labor issues for
the U.S. Department of Labor, also emphasized efforts to improve working
conditions, especially for children and teens.
Each year, 200,000 working teens are hurt in the United States, and 70
children die on the job, he said. 

The goal isn't to prevent children from holding safe jobs, just to keep
them safe, he said. "We've got to prevent the violation before it
happens," he said, so "injury doesn't occur."

Bishop Jonathan Keaton of East Canton, Ohio, raised the connection
between the Bishops' Initiative on Children and Poverty and issues
related to work. Poverty, he said, arises from unemployment, poor wages
and discrimination such as class or race.

The Rev. Darren Cushman Wood of Indianapolis, a task force member,
addressed the theological perspective, saying the ability to work is
part of being made in the image of a Creator God.

"Capitalism, as it is currently structured, is sinful," he declared.
"Profit before people" is at the heart of the system. It subordinates
human compassion, he said. "Because I am a child of God, I should be
treated with respect ... (and) don't have to be in competition with my
co-workers."

John Wesley, who founded Methodism in the 18th century, saw working with
miners and other laborers as a way of living out grace, Wood said. 

Christians need to go with Jesus, who is on the picket line and the
bread line, "where the folks are," he said.

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