From Interfaith Worker Justice: A Guide for Faith-Based Voters — Vote Your Values 2008

This guide is meant to highlight issues of major importance for working people in the U.S. during this election cycle.

The prophet Amos spoke God’s word thus: —Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream— (Amos 5:24). The foundation story of the Jewish faith is God’s liberation of His people from slavery in the land of Egypt. Further, the Bible commands us not only to give to the poor, but to advocate on their behalf. —Speak up, judge righteously, champion the poor and the [needy] (Proverbs 31:9).—

At the core of Christian belief is the vision of God lifting up the poor, the destitute, the homeless and the reviled. The Apostle Paul wrote, —Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality….Your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: ‘He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.’— (2 Corinthians 8:13-14).

In the 2006 elections, —values voters,— men and women whose political choices are influenced by deeply held religious and moral values, were crucial in the outcomes of six successful state referendums to raise the minimum wage. In 2008 we face an economy in freefall, millions of homeowners in danger of foreclosure, many millions more unable to obtain health insurance who face economic ruin if they or a loved one gets sick, workers who cannot take a paid sick day to care for themselves or a family member, workers who are robbed of their wages, and the worst income inequality since 1929.

This voter guide highlights several issues that are clearly critical to working families but that often receive scant attention by the media and by candidates for federal office. Interfaith Worker Justice urges people of faith, and indeed all citizens of conscience, to consider these issues when they cast their votes for president and congress in November 2008.

• Support the Right of Workers to Organize a Union —“ Pass the Employee Free Choice Act
• Health Care for All
• Stop Wage Theft
• A Job Should Get You Out of Poverty, Not Keep You In It
• We Need Comprehensive Immigration Reform
• All Workers Need Paid Sick Days —“ Support the Healthy Families Act

From personal experience I can tell you that these issues are real. Things like wage theft do occur – and much more frequently then you would suspect. The abuses people thought had long passed, the horror stories from the early 1900’s, are just as real today: child labor, forced labor, wages so inadequate that workers must sleep in unheated boxes at job sites, the same workers provided with just enough money to eat. They keep working because there is no means of escape, and in hope of getting paid eventually. I have heard of migrant construction workers who are transported, fed, and housed by companies. They work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. If they complain they are left at the side of the road, hundreds of miles from home, with no means to get home.

You may think they are illegals – they get what they deserve… Certainly not the way Christians should treat their bothers and sisters. Every human being deserves justice and fair compensation for his work. Hiring an illegal is not the basis for treating that person as a slave, nor is it allowance for breaking even more laws.

Deuteronomy 24:14-15 states:

“You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brethren or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns;
you shall give him his hire on the day he earns it, before the sun goes down (for he is poor, and sets his heart upon it); lest he cry against you to the LORD, and it be sin in you.”

I encourage you to read the materials IWJ presents and that you give them due consideration.