wfn.org | Task force on workers will seek continuation of its efforts

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

Feb. 23, 1999	Contact: Joretta Purdue*(202)546-8722*Washington
10-71BP{099}

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LINTHICUM HEIGHTS, Md. (UMNS) - The United Methodist Church's Concern for
Workers Task Force will ask the denomination's highest legislative body to
continue the group and its work for justice during 2001-2004.

At its third and final meeting, Feb. 19-20, the 15-member task force agreed
to make the request and prepared several resolutions related to work and
working conditions. 

The task force was created at the direction of the 1996 General Conference
by two churchwide agencies, the Board of Church and Society and the Board of
Global Ministries. The resolutions, along with the group's report, will be
submitted through both agencies' voting directors and may be altered by
them. General Conference, the church's top lawmaking body, will meet next
year.

Resolutions that are 12 or more years old will expire at the end of 2000 if
they are not readopted as the result of a rule enacted by the 1996 General
Conference, so teams within the task force worked to update some of those,
including "Economic Justice," passed in 1988, and "Special Needs of
Farmworkers," passed in 1976.

"Extension of the Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively," originally
passed in 1980 but amended and readopted in 1996, was revised to suggest
that congregations and annual conferences could provide safe meeting places.

Task force members revised the Labor Day Litany and a Labor Day message.
They decided to have staff make the litany and message available to the
central conferences as soon as translations could be made because most of
the world honors workers on May 1.

In other business, the task force evaluated its global consultation held
last October. The group made plans to inform members of the workers' rights
network it had established about related legislation going to General
Conference and national employment issues.
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