Interfaith Worker Justice points to a group of retailers who are either refusing to negotiate with workers or are proactively dragging worker organizers (on hunger strike) and worker advocates into court to in an attempt to block advocacy and worker organization.

Seems to me that we become less and less free when big corporations can so blithely attack the right of people to freely gather, or to espouse a cause. Something about that in some old document in Washington, but who remembers that anymore. First they came for the organizers, then…

In the first instance, the parent company of several chains, SuperValu, including a chain local to me, Save-A-Lot Stores, filed a suit against organizers and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (Center of Workers United in Struggle — CTUL), IWJ’s affiliate in the Minneapolis-St. Paul. The workers had sought the Center’s assistance because as they state:

Every night, we are surrounded by food as we clean the grocery stores in our community. Yet often we cannot afford to put enough food on the table for our own families.

With the help of CTUL, workers who clean Cub Foods stores have been trying for over a year to engage Cub Foods in a dialogue about fair wages and working conditions. Also with the help of CTUL, workers went on Hunger Strike for 12 days beginning at the end of May, in a further effort to seek a dialogue. That hunger strike action resulted in SuperValu suing CTUL and its organizers personally.

Please pray for the workers and organizers, sign this on-line petition to support them, and if you are able, make a donation to assist in fighting off this assault on the Center and its organizers.

I Stand with CTUL for Fair Wages and Working Conditions for Retail Cleaning Workers in the Twin Cities

I am concerned about the many reports of human rights violations taking place in retail cleaning. When retail cleaning workers earn sub-poverty wages and have increasingly stressful workloads, this has a negative impact on our entire community. Therefore, I stand firmly with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) in calling on major retail chains (including Cub Foods, SuperValu, Target, and Lunds & Byerly’s) to partner with CTUL to create a code of conduct that guarantees fair wages and benefits for the workers who clean their stores.

Meanwhile at Walmart, work for change is building momentum because of the voices of workers and their advocates.

Walmart Associates throughout the country are standing up for change at Walmart – and IWJ is standing beside them as they work to make a difference in their stores and their company. Momentum is building – both for the Associate-led Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) and for Making Change at Walmart, a campaign that stands in solidarity with Associates claiming the respect they deserve.

No single employer in America has a larger impact on employment standards than Walmart. That’s why stopping Walmart’s race to the bottom is essential. From my point-of-view, the race to the bottom is becoming pervasive in our culture. We all want faster, less expensive, and more convenient, and the thing that makes that happen is a push to lower wages, eliminate benefits, and work people until they drop. The savings have to come from somewhere, so we no longer manufacture in our country, and the workers who are left have to pay the price for a better bottom line. Sadly, we also do it to our neighbors. Should our neighbor be a Union member who enjoys a better standard of living we say: ‘Why should he/she have it, take it away,’ and in due course we all loose what little we have.

If you are concerned in seeing change happen at Walmart, and at fighting against the race to the bottom, be sure to like the Making Change at Walmart Facebook page.

Begin with prayer for workers, and ask for strength to speak out. Speak up for worker rights. Ask that contractor who comes to your door whether his/her workers are employees. You would think that when they tell a worker to nail shingles to your roof that worker would be an employee. Unfortunately, most times employers illegally claim that workers are “independent.” Really!!! The boss is telling them to do something, what shingles to nail, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, but they are “independent.” Ask your local restauranteur whether the people chopping food in the back room are paid fairly. Ask the chain market manager whether his/her workers are paid properly and have benefits. Then vote with your feet and dollars supporting only those who do right by their workers and your community.

Workers can find more information on minimum employment standards, and can file complaints at the U.S. Department of Labor’s We Can Help/Podemos ayudar webpage.

When did we clothe you, feed you, dress your wounds, visit you? Whenever you did it to these, the least of my brothers (Matthew 25:40).