Faith Works 8-31-19
Jeff Gill
Labor and the life of faith
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Labor Day weekend is upon us, the end of summer and the start, in many ways, of the fall.
It's a time to take a day off, even though many of us don't, and is meant to honor the role of workers in our economy, and has been used to celebrate the work of labor unions in our national history.
Grover Cleveland started it in 1894, but the observance has roots back in American Federation of Labor celebrations years earlier; today's AFL-CIO is a labor federation, a group of unions still working together today.
There was an even earlier push to honor workers on May Day, May 1, but that was associated with anarchists and communism, and some argue the development of Labor Day at the start of September was to avoid that connection.
This is where churches and faith communities and unions have their own awkward history. It would make sense that a cause intended to bring people together for their common good and mutual support would resonate with Christian congregations, but the concern that socialism and unionism were two sides of the same coin made many churches avoid open support of unions and union causes.
Washington Gladden, a Congregational minister in Columbus in the 1880s through the 1900s, may be better known to you as the author of the hymn "O Master, Let Me Walk With Thee" but he was also an early advocate of the labor movement. As a member of Columbus city council, he advocated for public ownership of utilities such as water and sewer services.
Doesn't sound that radical, does it? But it did then. The early Labor Day parades and marches in Gladden's day called for wild and crazy stuff like the eight hour work day, paid vacation (usually asking for two whole weeks), and stopping child labor in factories.
And they were denounced as anarchists and socialists and communists for calling on the public to support such things. Churches found themselves split in some cases over whether to support or affirm union organizing, and agendas like the eight hour day, paid vacation, no child labor program of the early 1900s.
The Catholic Church has historically been more sympathetic and openly supportive of labor unions, perhaps because of their association with immigrant groups and struggling workers more generally. Because of this, during the period of Ku Klux Klan control of Newark city government in the early 1920s, their leadership called for barring Catholics from serving in public works, police, and fire as supporting "radical socialist organization," which was mostly unsuccessful and partly led to their dissolution and loss of power by 1925, but the echoes continued for generations.
The congregation I serve has a long history of being very much a church of union workers, with active members and leaders over the years who have been union local officials and leaders in that sphere as well. I grew up in northwest Indiana, where the USW and UAW and Teamsters were just part of the landscape along with the steel mills and factories curving along the lakeshore up into Chicago.
But the decline of union membership nationally has certainly been reflected locally. We still have a few open and active union halls in town, but many fewer than just a couple of decades ago. The loss of major manufacturing means the decrease in numbers of members, and that loss of dues means a lessening of influence, both civically and politically in Licking County.
There's still a Labor Day parade in Newark, on Monday at noon from the high school down Granville Street to Fifth St. to Main. As with many parades, it's not as big or long as it used to be, but the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions are still out waving their banners for organized labor.
For religious communities, the challenge in how to support labor is complicated today by politics, and that's a whole series of columns. But whatever your party affiliation, and whether you've ever paid union dues or not in your working life, people of faith can agree that workers should have a safe and healthy working environment, and receive a fair day's wages for a full day's work.
Like any human institution (including the church!) labor unions have their flaws. I still think we need them, even those of us not in their membership. My dad always said "unions are only needed when there's bad management . . . " and then he'd say there's always going to be bad management, sooner or later. So I think in the Beloved Community, we're always going to want to have labor unions around.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think about labor and grace and the Gospel at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
