The Dignity of Work
School just started and already there is a holiday on the horizon.
Labor Day began as a day recognized by labor activists and individual states and is rooted during a time when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers made to the country. In June 1894 president Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year a national holiday. (You can learn more about the origins of the holiday here.)
Most of my Labor Day memories include cookouts (in the PNW we call them BBQs), parades, and trying to find something to do with our surprise day off. By the time Labor Day rolled around in Tennessee we had been in school for nearly a month and a break was welcome.
DID YOU KNOW?
The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church addresses workers’ rights in the Economic Justice section. Economic Justice Part C addresses the Dignity of Work:
We believe in the dignity of work, not merely as a means of subsistence, but as a way for individuals to contribute to the flourishing of their families and contribute to the common good. This affirmation of the dignity of work leads us to support the right to safe and secure working conditions, free from health and safety hazards. We also endorse the establishment and enforcement of policies that guarantee workers fair and equitable compensation, sometimes referred to as a living wage. We recognize that full employment is a distant dream in many communities and cultures and, in such situations, the challenges in establishing workers’ rights are significant. Still, the church advocates for the fair and decent treatment of workers and supports policies that expand opportunities for more people to find meaningful work with just compensation and benefits.
We oppose the widespread reliance on child labor, which forces children under the age of eighteen (18) to relinquish their childhoods and forgo educational opportunities, and instead to work in commercial agriculture, industrial manufacturing, or extractive industries.
We support workers’ freedom of association, including their rights to organize unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to protest both unsafe working conditions and unjust employment policies and practices. We also support workers’ right to strike. We reject efforts to permanently replace workers engaged in strikes or to make organized work stoppages illegal.
We support measures that limit the length of both the workday and workweek and endorse policies that guarantee every worker paid time off, including but not limited to sick time and bereavement leave, opportunities to vote and carry out other civic duties, holiday or vacation time, and parental leave for those caring for newborns or newly adopted children.
SCRIPTURE BACKGROUND
Supporting workers’ rights is not a new thing for Christians engaging in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 20 we read the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The owner comes five times to the place where laborers are gathered and sends them to work in his vineyard.
The owner told the workers that they would be paid what was fair.
The parable ends with the landowner paying each worker for a day’s wage, whether they worked the full day or not. The landowner determines that those who were hired last also deserved a living wage, not based on the output of their work but based on their right to work. You can read the full passage here.
Later in the New Testament, in the letter to James, the author warns those who are rich due to the fact that they failed to pay their workers a living wage have condemned and murdered the innocent one. You can read the full passage here.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR US?
Many, if not all, of us have benefited from the acknowledgement that work, no matter how insignificant it may seem, makes our world a place where people can thrive. Work equality such as fair compensation, time off, overtime pay, and safe working conditions are imperative.
I was working with a literacy-based nonprofit in 2018 when school districts in Clark County, Washington delayed the start of school while teachers went on strike to protest working conditions that were unfairly compensated and unsafe. The strike lasted two weeks.
During this time it was important for us to lean into our United Methodist polity – supporting the right that educators have to fair wages, fair time off and bereavement policies, and fair parental leave periods, to name a few things.
Our role in that time was to ensure that kids had a safe place to go and food to eat. Kids would typically have access to these things at school, but that wasn’t happening while the educators were on strike. You can read more about what we did here.
Educators are once again on strike in Clark County in the Evergreen School District. This time it’s bus drivers, paraeducators, and other classified support staff demanding fair access to things that are not necessarily a given.
SUPPORT FOR THE COMMUNITY
As a United Methodist who believes firmly in the dignity of work and the rights of workers, I hold the needs of the classified staff close. It is my responsibility to step into the gaps and help to fight for what is fair, even if it is scary. Even if it costs me something. Even if it makes me tired.
At the end of the day, it is my faith that drives me to demand justice across the board, not just for me and my own – just us – but for the whole of the community. The more we work for justice, the closer we get to bringing forth the Kingdom of God among us.
Labor Day has its origins in the Industrial Revolution, a time when people were beginning to move to cities and become more isolated from one another, making it easier to exploit workers (particularly women and children). Those who were very poor or recent immigrants to the United States often faced the harshest working conditions.
Supporting our community means that we continue to work for what’s right among the very poor and the immigrants among us. Supporting organizations like the Western Farm Worker’s Association helps us to lean into the places where we can best help our neighbors and ask them what they need of us.
Did you work to create the communities that we know? I give you thanks. Are you still working to bring the Kingdom among us in a way that is just and fair? I give you thanks. Are you on the periphery? I encourage you to support workers’ rights in whatever way feels appropriate and meaningful to you.
If you want to know more about the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church, you can read the whole document online here. If you would like to learn more in a class setting, I will be teaching a class on the Social Principles beginning September 14 during the 9:30 Sunday School hour. You can register here.
Blessings to you, and to your work.
Yours in Community,
Rev. Rachel