NYT: Theology Finds Its Way Into a Debate Over Unions

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09religion.html?em

By SAMUEL FREEDMAN
Published: August 8, 2008

ORANGE, Calif. — The Rev. Wayne Hartmire picked his way down a sun-baked sidewalk in this Los Angeles suburb, moving from picket to picket, dispensing advice. Six volunteers were holding placards during the noon shift, trying to catch the attention of lunchtime traffic, and to Mr. Hartmire’s practiced eye, they were doing it all wrong.

Turn the signs at an angle, he explained, so drivers can easily see the slogan. Make eye contact. Smile, wave, give a thumbs up. Just don’t bother calling out any chants. Anyone inside a passing car will just think you’re yelling.

Mr. Hartmire, now 74, had learned the techniques 35 years earlier as a Presbyterian minister marching alongside César Chávez and the United Farm Workers. On this day in late July, he was turning the weapons not against landowners or growers, the enemies of decades past, but against an order of nuns who had been his allies back then.

Just two blocks away and around the corner stood the Mother House of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. During the farm workers’ campaigns, Mr. Hartmire recalled, the order had housed union activists. Some St. Joseph sisters went to jail in 1973 in solidarity with Chávez.

Now it was different. The Sisters of St. Joseph, as the formal sponsor of a health-care system covering 14 hospitals and 20,000 workers in three states, were the target of an organizing effort by the Service Employees International Union. After five years of escalation, the union had brought its campaign literally to the doorstep of the sisterhood, holding rallies and worship services.

In practical terms, the stakes are about 9,000 employees of eight of the nine St. Joseph hospitals in California, essentially all the workers except doctors, nurses and operating engineers. The impasse between the union and the hospital system involves the rules for holding an election on whether, and by whom, those employees want to be represented in collective bargaining.

FULL story at link.

[saltpoint]

1. Recommended.

:thumbsup: :hi:

[jwirr]

2. It does not surprise me to see it is the Presbyterian Church. In the

60-70s that church was one of the most activist of the liberal churches. Were there was a need there was a Presbyterian minister helping out.