Teamsters, Religious Leaders Unite to Continue Martin Luther King Jr.'s Fight for Worker Rights

[Omaha Steve]

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/DC1841803042008-1.htm

April 03, 2008: 11:00 AM EST

National Committee for Sanitation Worker Justice Demands Safe Conditions at Waste Management

MEMPHIS, Tenn., April 3, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Teamsters and religious leaders from across the country stood in unity today with waste workers from 1968 and 2008 to demand Waste Management Inc. and other sanitation companies make immediate and substantive improvements in worker safety.

The Teamsters and religious leaders announced at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tennessee, the formation of the National Committee for Sanitation Worker Justice (NCSWJ). The coalition was formed by Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) in response to the findings of the investigative report, "In Harm's Way," which was issued last month by the National Commission of Inquiry into the Worker Health and Safety Crisis in the Solid Waste Industry. The report shows that waste workers still face very real threats to their health on a daily basis, threats that have caused an average of more than

80 deaths a year in this industry.

"Forty years ago Dr. King joined with the maligned and abused sanitation workers of Memphis to insist on human dignity and economic justice," said Rev. Nelson Johnson, Director of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, North Carolina, Co-President of the Board of IWJ and Co-Chair of the NCSWJ. "The 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination ought to serve as a clarion call to faith leaders and people of good will all over the nation to join together to complete the unfinished work for which Dr. King courageously gave his life."

"Today's plantation capitalism is as rapacious and cruel as it was in the sanitation strike 40 years go, which I chaired," said Rev. James Lawson, pastor emeritus of the Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis and renowned civil rights leader. "It is past time for this most religious country, this most religious people, to repudiate the economics of the plantation. Jesus insisted that without justice you miss the meaning of the Torah and the prophets."

The family of deceased Waste Management, Inc. (WMI) mechanic Raul Figueroa from West Palm Beach, Florida, joined SWJC, 1968 strikers, safety advocates and representatives from the Teamsters Union at the press conference to show their support for the goals of the committee.

FULL story at link.