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Are you a clergy or layperson who wants to help your congregation make the connection between faith and work? Your Labor Day weekend worship service is an ideal time to do this. Workers Interfaith Network and our national organization Interfaith Worker Justice have prepared a number of resources to help you plan your service.
You can view a complete list of resources here, but I want to highlight a few things for you:
- Looking for a scripture for your sermon that relates to work and justice? See our list. If you can think of another good scripture to use, tell me in the comments section.
- Need a prayer or a responsive reading? Here are a collect and a responsive prayer you can use.
- City of Memphis workers are facing a crisis as the City has cut their pay, in violation of collective bargaining agreements the City already signed. Use our bulletin insert to share about their situation, and let members of your congregation know how they can help.
- Interfaith Worker Justice has a number of prayer and responsive readings about the unemployment crisis.
- If you'll be celebrating the eucharist on Labor Day weekend, you can use our Great Thanksgiving for Labor Sunday.
Of course, if you're in the Memphis area, we hope you'll also be inviting members of your congregation to attend the Faith and Labor Picnic on Labor Day. The Faith and Labor Picnic is the best way to celebrate the true meaning of Labor Day with 450 other people who care about justice for workers.
Do you plan to do something special in your worship service to connect faith and work? Let us know what your plans are in the comments section.
Partner with workers seeking justice: become a sponsor or buy tickets to WIN's Faith and Labor Picnic. Buying your tickets before the Picnic gets you a 15 percent discount!
In case you missed it, the budget agreement passed by the Memphis City Council last week slammed the City's rank and file workers hard. 125 workers are going to be laid off. Sanitation workers will be offered buyouts, with the goal of reducing the department (which is currently contributing to the city's general fund) down to half its size. Death benefits were taken away from workers, though the City announced yesterday some of those benefits would be restored. Twelve of the thirteen paid holidays workers had were taken away.
In their haste to pass a budget package - which is still not in writing, by the way - the Council ignored Councilman Joe Brown's assertion that workers' paid holidays were guaranteed by a City ordinance. Now that Mayor Wharton's administration has realized Councilman Brown was right, they're telling the City's rank and file workers they will have to accept a 4.6 percent salary cut.
This salary cut comes after all the city's unions already negotiated pay and work agreements with the City this spring. In those agreements, workers went without any raises and agreed to absorb health insurance premium increases themselves. The unions upheld their responsibility to negotiate with the City in good faith, and now the City is trying to undo the agreements they've already come to with their workers.
The agreements between the unions and the City are called memoranda of understanding. They include a procedure for dealing with situations of fiscal emergency. This procedure requires Mayor Wharton's administration to show their books to the unions to prove that a real hardship exists. So far, Mayor Wharton has been unwilling to do this. Instead his administration has urged the unions to "come to the table," without having key knowledge about what the City's financial situation really is.
Furthermore, the Mayor's proposed 4.6 percent salary cut endangers the living wage resolution that the City Council passed in 2006, in which permanent City workers are to be paid at least $10 an hour. In 2007, the City Council passed another resolution promising temporary City workers at least $12 an hour because they do not receive any kinds of benefits. There are very likely workers being paid right at $10 and $12 an hour right now, and the pay cuts would violate the promise to pay a living wage.
It's time for the citizens of Memphis to call on Mayor Wharton and City Council members to act in good faith with their workers.
Here's how you can help:
- Call Mayor Wharton's office at (901) 576-6000 and the City Council office at 576-6786. Tell them a pay cut for the city's rank and file workers is unacceptable. Urge the City to neogiate in good faith with workers' unions.
- Come to the City Council meeting this Tuesday, July 5th at 3:30 p.m.
No matter what happens in the next couple of weeks with the budget, this attack on the hard-working people who keep our city running is not over. We're working on long-term plans to address this attack, so keep your eyes open for more news from us soon.
Special thanks to Brad Watkins of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center and Chad Johnson at AFSCME Local 1733 for their monitoring and reporting on all the budget developments with the City Council. I am drawing heavily on their work in this post.
Want to take action with workers seeking justice and keep up to date on what's happening with City workers? Sign up for email action alerts from Workers Interfaith Network at http://www.workersinterfaithnetwork.org/index/involved/subscribe.htm
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