News

When manufacturing plants in greater Pittsburgh began wholesale closures in the late 1970s, Barney Oursler jumped into the activist community to help people who had lost their jobs. At meetings, he began noticing people wearing clerical collars and nuns' habits.

"I had not thought about church people that way before," he said. "I kept in my head this division between Sunday and the workday. That's a very false separation."

A Chicago-based organization called the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, together with the AFL-CIO, is working to harness the common concerns of the labor and religious communities. This weekend, hundreds of cities are participating in the organizations' Labor in the Pulpit program. More than 200 places of worship in Pittsburgh — mostly Christian churches — are taking part.

Some churches will invite union speakers; Oursler planned to address the congregation of Holy Family Church in Lawrenceville. In other churches, pastors have scheduled a Labor Day message on economic justice and worker dignity. Some congregations will receive inserts in bulletins.

Labor in the Pulpits began in 1996 with only a few congregations and union members in a few cities.

In Pittsburgh, churches representing Catholics, Methodists and the Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania are participating this weekend. The holy books of Jews and Muslims also address justice for workers.

Oursler, co-coordinator of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, said his message to congregants will be that unions, like churches, must look at the whole of people's lives. "Most of the union's work is with people who are having problems," he said, "people who are hurting."

Joe Delale, AFL-CIO community liaison in Pittsburgh, plans to speak at St. Nicholas Church in Millvale. He decided to talk about some Labor Day history, with the pastor's permission.

Delale, of Shaler, said he will remind people about the struggle for the right to organize, for eight-hour workdays, a minimum wage and child labor laws.

"Work is not just a burden, not just how you make a living," he said. "Work is a way to support your family, of realizing your dignity, of promoting the common good and participating in God's creation."

Mike Leonard, international executive vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, traveled from Washington, D.C., to speak at St. Robert's Catholic Church in East McKeesport.

He said that Labor Day 2002 presents this country with new challenges as basic social justice is threatened by low-paying service jobs that replaced manufacturing work, by the lack of health insurance for many and by the disappearance of pension plans with guaranteed benefits.

He urged a return to the social teachings of the church.

"Much of today's poverty is not a result of laziness, or lack of a job or lack of productivity, but of low wages," Leonard said. "Much of today's economic insecurity comes not from the ups and downs of the economy, but from unrestrained human greed."

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News