Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in This Land in July 2011.
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers. —Isaiah 58:3
Our song is our meeting and our music is our union. Yes. It is so. It is true. —Woody Guthrie
On February 24, amid weeks of protest in and around Wisconsin’s state capitol over Gov. Scott Walker’s bill stripping unions of their right to collective bargaining—their most basic reason for existing—members of several unions joined a conference call with regional religious leaders, urging support from people of faith for the workers’ struggle. “The future of the common good is at stake,” warned one union president, according to a report in The Progressive Christian magazine. An Ohio pastor agreed: “There’s always a danger that workers will be oppressed if there aren’t safeguards in place to assure they have a place at the table. It is crucial in 2011 for people of faith to stand with labor, because if we don’t, some fundamental rights and values will be under assault. Our faith traditions stand for human dignity, and so do unions.”
Can I get an amen?
Fairness, equal opportunity, charity, justice—these are more than mere matters of government policy, they are indeed “fundamental rights and values.” Labor rights are supported by the doctrines of every major American denomination, from the Presbyterians’ “Principles of Vocation and Work” to the “Workplace Fairness Resolution” from the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Catholics have a lengthy tradition in the workplace; as recently as May 2010 the Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice published a position paper titled “Union Busting Is a Mortal Sin,” which says, “Since the right to form labor unions is rooted in the Divine Law, no created law may be invoked to deny, or frustrate, or impede that right.”
Why don’t we hear the left wielding language like that on cable news? We’re facing a long haul through difficult economic times—and the wealthiest 1 percent no doubt will continue employing its shock doctrine to further degrade the power of labor in the name of prudence and frugality— but American unions have lost the skill or the will to frame their argument in the debate as a moral mandate with the same religious fervor of the right.