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Advocate for Family-Sustaining Living Wages and the Right to Organize

March 12, 2015 by Sandy Irving, Volunteer Program Associate

According to Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), “four million fast food workers across the country are struggling to make ends meet. Many workers are standing up for $15 per hour and the right to form a union without retaliation.” Other low-wage workers, such as home health care workers, are now joining this struggle.

After enduring bad weather in recent weeks – snow, ice, treacherous driving conditions, schools out at a moment’s notice, and lengthy power outages for many – I have been thinking about low wage workers. They  get no paid leave – no sick leave, no paid vacation to use for missing work because of bad road conditions or to care for children out of school. Workers come to mind who have trouble making ends meet in good times with full work schedules who recently have had reduced hours and even less pay to fill in the gaps.

How do we walk hand-in-hand with our brothers and sisters who are leading this struggle to raise wages to $15 per hour and to guarantee the right to organize so that millions of working families might be lifted out of poverty, contributing to prosperity for all workers in our country? How many of us “good church folk” appreciate the fast food workers who come to work early in the morning to prepare coffee for our stop on the way to our job? Do we appreciate the home health care workers who take care of our elderly and sick? How do we follow the directions of Jesus to “Do unto others as we’d have them do to us”?

IWJ reports that “in the U.S., CEO pay is 400 times the average worker’s wages. That gap is growing. And it is worse in those places where the organized voice of workers has been silenced.”

For more than 100 years, labor unions have stood with workers and given workers a voice. We have the eight-hour workday, social security, anti-child labor laws and the minimum wage, thanks to labor unions. The National Council of Churches, in the “Social Creed for the 21st Century,” has called on people of faith “as disciples of the One who came ‘that all may have life and have it abundantly’” to stand for family-sustaining living wages and the rights of workers to organize.

Can you join with workers on Wednesday, April 15 as they meet to continue their struggle?

Stand in Solidarity with Low-Wage Workers
Wednesday, April 15, 5 p.m.
Shaw University Quad
118 E South Street, Raleigh

 

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Children & Youth, Economic Justice, Organized Labor

About Sandy Irving, Volunteer Program Associate

Health care reform, labor issues, member of NCCC peace, nominating and legislative committees. Activist for justice, grandmother of 6, Presbyterian and retired research associate from Biostatistics Dept, School of Public Health, UNC-CH. Currently on the board of NC Peace Action.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jeremy Sprinkle says

    March 13, 2015 at 10:34 am

    Thank you for this thoughtful reflection and message, Sandy!

    Reply

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