c. 1998 Religion News Service

ATLANTA, Ga. _ In the latest show of the growing solidarity between mainline Protestantism and the labor movement, a Methodist-sponsored consultation has issued a ringing call on church members and other Christians to unite more openly and aggressively with the labor movement to end labor and human rights abuses globally.

And participants put feet where their rhetoric was by walking in a picket line for an hour in support of efforts by the Service Employees International Union to gain official recognition at Morehouse College in Atlanta. The school is locked in a bitter dispute with SEIU over collective bargaining rights for workers in the Headstart program there.

The Atlanta convocation was sponsored by the Washington-based Concern for Workers Task Force of the United Methodist Church. It had staff and financial support of the denomination’s Board of Global Ministries and Board of Church and Society.

The three-day, mid-November meeting was one of a host of events across the nation in the last year that have seen religious leaders and laity join picket lines, host conferences and issues statements urging greater cooperation between religion and labor on behalf of workers.

At the Atlanta meeting, the rights of workers were given a global dimension in a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the 90th anniversary of the adoption of the Social Creed of the UMC.

Thom White Wolf Fassett, general secretary of the Board of Church and Society, called the Methodist social action statement”one of the most important documents of human history,”because it committed Methodists to work actively for the poor, the disenfranchised and the underpaid workers of the world.

Fassett pointed to United Methodist funding aiding women workers in India who were organizing street demonstrations to protest sex discrimination and labor abuses.

Liberato Bautista, head of the United Methodist office at the United Nations, said the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”clearly supports rights of organized labor.”However, in the United States, political rights are more developed than labor rights. But, people of faith are beginning to highlight alliances between labor and the churches.” Retired Bishop Jesse DeWitt, who began his professional life as a unionized sheetmetal worker, told the convocation that Methodists”made a strong proclamation for a minimum wage 90 years ago, but we still don’t have adequate minimum wages for American workers.”When are we going to put our proclamations into our bodies and walk where our proclamations tell us to be? There is a lot for us to do yet.” Jerry Meszaros, an organizer of the consultation and the executive director of the Religion and Labor Council in Kansas City, Mo., said the primary purpose of the meeting was to allow Methodist leaders to hear from labor activists as they”ponder how best to respond to the 1996 call of the United Methodist Church’s General Conference to place more emphasis on needs of workers and their families.””I believe the United Methodist Church has lost much of its passion for justice in the workplace,”he said.”I pray that this consultation will help to reignite that passion.” Keynote speaker Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, told the group that”lifting America means to narrow the income gap between the rich and the workers. It means raising living standards for all. It means securing retirement and health care benefits for every worker.”In the labor movement, we are helping to set the agenda for our nation. Something is very, very wrong with our national system … Despite well-known increases in the economy, real earnings have declined by 12 percent since 1979.” Fassett, in his speech, suggested church membership requirements should include”a real, live, hands-on ministry in the community, such as walking in a labor protest.” He recalled that in the 1800s, in the beginning days of the American labor movement, Methodist preachers were often leaders of trade unions. He said they were called”Ranters”because of their gifts of public speaking.

DEA END HARWELL