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The Times reports that the program "seeks to recreate the historic partnership between faith and labor, an alliance that for nearly a century gave union leaders an aura of moral authority -- and their cause the stamp of divine righteousness."
These days, the AFL-CIO needs all the help it can get. Less than 8 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions. That's a severe drop-off from the 1950s, when 35 percent belonged. Alarmed by this trend, several member unions have threatened to secede from the AFL-CIO, setting the scene for a potentially dramatic convention next week in Chicago.
In the meantime, union leaders are trying programs like the one involving the seminary students, hoping it will restore organized labor's image as a dynamic force for social justice. The students are paid $300 a week to organize security guards in metropolitan Washington, carpenters in Boston, hotel maids in Chicago, meatpackers in Los Angeles. "Some spend their days with the workers, trying to give them courage to mobilize," the Times reports. "Others visit local congregations to urge solidarity with the union cause."
The students also march on management, quoting Scripture and sometimes creating public theater meant to embarass.
"We're showing up in their office, telling them that God does not want them to act the way they're acting toward their workers," said rabbinical student Margie Klein, 26. "They're going to get the message."
Another student, born-again Christian Jerad Morey, told the Times that he finds motivation in the stories workers have told him about forced overtime, on-the-job injuries, and schedules forever in flux. They're pushed so hard, he said, they don't have the chance to "lead an abundant life" -- to read, to play with their children, to worship. "They're not living up to their divine potential," he said.
Several interns told the newspaper that they weren't at all certain that unions were a force for good when they took the job. John Flack, who plans to be ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said he worried about finding "a lot of corruption and complacency." But so far, he hasn't. On the contrary, he's been impressed with the union's energy, he said.
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