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Across New York State and the country a
growing movement is bringing workers and their
supporters in unions, religious institutions
and youth groups together in efforts to
challenge corporate control and to move toward
greater economic justice. Specifically,
workers, trade unionists, people of faith and
young people are uniting to fight sweatshop
conditions at home and abroad and to end child
labor. They also are actively leading
campaigns that call upon municipalities to
require that those doing business with
government pay living wages.
Our
Mission
Founded as a volunteer organization more than
20 years ago--and incorporated in 1997--the
New York State Labor-Religion Coalition is a
growing alliance of unions, religious
institutions, youth groups and individuals who
share a commitment to challenging economic
injustice. Through education, support for
organizing, and advocacy the Coalition works
to help low-wage workers both in New York and
in developing countries to challenge corporate
control. Both the labor movement and religious
institutions share a long history of activism
for social justice and both root this work in
a fundamental respect for the dignity of each
worker. We believe-and have demonstrated-that
together unions and religious institutions can
advance workers' rights. That said, the
Coalition is both nonpartisan and
nonsectarian. While we believe that all
workers have the right to union representation
if they so choose, we do not represent or
speak for any union. Similarly, we do not
adhere to or promote the religious beliefs of
any faith.
Our Structure
The New York Labor-Religion Coalition is a
statewide organization with ten local
affiliates. Seven of the local chapters have
at least part-time paid staff. The statewide
office which coordinates much of the
Coalition's work, is located in Albany. The
local chapters are spread across the state in
Buffalo, the Capital District (Albany and
surrounding communities), Utica, Central New
York (Syracuse and surrounding communities),
Long Island, New York City, Rochester, the
State's Southern Tier (Elmira and surrounding
communities), the Hudson Valley and
Westchester County.
Active coalition members
include unions such as the New York State
United Teachers, the National Health and Human
Service Employees Union, Local 1199/SEIU ,
UNITE , the New York State Nurses Association,
District Council 1707 of the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees (AFSCME), United University
Professions, the Professional Staff Congress,
the Public Employees Federation, and others.
Churches, synagogues and
mosques that are active in the coalition
include seven of the eight Catholic Diocese in
New York State, the Albany United Methodist
Society, the New York Board of Rabbis, several
Unitarian-Universalist churches across the
state, the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the
Islamic Da'wah Educational Alliance, the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, and others.
Youth organizations in our
alliance include all of the Free the Children
chapters in the state. Also, we are active
with United Students Against Sweatshops in
Albany, Buffalo, Long Island, Rochester and
Syracuse.
Our
Model and Work
Under the leadership of the
National Interfaith Committee for Worker
Justice, religion-labor alliances are
increasing across the country. Nationwide, the
New York State Labor-Religion Coalition is the
oldest such coalition.
Combining Local Initiatives
with a Shared Statewide Program
We function constitutionally
and interactively at both the state and local
level. Our approach is to blend locally based
work-such as leading a community's living wage
campaign, building support for a local
organizing effort such as the cafeteria
workers at New York City's Metropolitan Opera,
or generating attention about egregious health
and safety violations in a Syracuse plastics
plant-with statewide programming and
initiatives.
Each local chapter
participates in a shared set of activities
such as our annual 40-Hour Fast and our
Sweatfree Schools campaign. Each March, for
the last five years, we have led a statewide
40-hour fast intended to highlight the plight
of New York's invisible, low-wage workforce.
In 2001, the fast focused on home care workers
who are organizing to join a union, farm
workers who are advocating to be included
under the state's labor laws, and immigrant
day laborers who are struggling to win better
pay, safer working conditions, and an end to
abusive treatment from employers. Coalition
members organized numerous events across the
state to publicize the conditions that these
workers face.
Similarly, as a part of the
statewide campaign we call Sweatfree Schools,
Coalition chapters are leading efforts to get
their local parochial and public school
districts to adopt anti-sweatshop procurement
policies for apparel (primarily for their
school and sports uniforms). In Suffolk County
on Long Island, the local Coalition chapter
expanded the campaign into the larger
community and led a successful effort to pass
the first countywide Sweatfree Resolution in
the country.
Blending a statewide
organization with local chapters enables
Coalition affiliates to learn from one another
and to build on each other's victories. For
instance, our Rochester chapter recently led
that city's successful living wage campaign.
The Long Island chapter is now actively
working toward a countywide living wage bill.
And the chapter in New York City is part of
the leadership team in the City's new living
wage initiative. Meanwhile at the state level,
we will be working with the Fiscal Policy
Institute to apply the Self-Sufficiency
Standard, which is a more sophisticated way of
calculating the wages and benefits that
constitute a real, community-specific living
wage.
Linking Local and
International Labor Struggles
Since 1997, the Coalition has
led eight delegations of rank-and-file union
members, community leaders, teachers, young
people, clergy, and union leaders to the
maquiladoras and colonias (workers'
neighborhoods) in Mexico along the Texas
border. These delegations have met with
workers, organizers, and health and
environmental experts to learn both about the
conditions that maquiladora workers endure and
about their organizing efforts to improve
those conditions.
For many delegation members,
first-hand knowledge about workers' struggles
in the maquiladoras often makes real what had
been an abstract understanding of the global
consequences of corporate control. Thus, once
home, many delegation members move into
leadership roles in their local Coalition
chapter. For example, one delegate persuaded
his union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), to
produce 1,500 copies of his video documenting
maquiladora workers' living conditions and to
distribute the video to every UAW local in the
United States and Canada. Another delegate
from Syracuse has developed a presentation
that he has given to twenty-one local union,
community, and religious groups. And as a
result of their participation in the February
2001 delegation, at least two young people
have decided to pursue social justice-oriented
careers.
Bringing Youth Organizations into the NYS
Labor-Religion Coalition
Anti-sweatshop youth
organizations and activists are choosing to
join with us because our collaborative
relationship provides them with both mentoring
and a means to participate in local workers'
rights campaigns. Participation in the
Coalition enables young people to translate
the spirit of the protests against corporate
control-as manifest in the anti-IMF and anti-WTO
protests in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and
Prague-into concrete action.
The Coalition serves as the
umbrella organization, providing mentoring and
administrative support, to the incipient Free
the Children chapters that young people are
founding across the state. (Free the Children
is a youth-led organization dedicated both to
empowering young people and to eradicating
child labor.) In October 2000, the Coalition
was a key organizer in convening the
first-ever-statewide meeting of New York's
Free the Children chapters. Over 140
anti-child labor youth activists met for 1½
days to learn more about the issues that
concern them, to enhance their leadership
skills, and to build connections with one
another across the state.
In response to their interest,
the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition
led youth-oriented delegations to the
maquiladoras in Mexico. Trips to Mexico help
youth activists understand the connections
between the conditions of the maquiladora
workers and anti-sweatshop activism in their
own communities. Members of the February 2001
and 2002 delegations, for instance, now are
organizing their school districts to pass
Sweatfree Schools policies.
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