Grateful for the Hands that Labor

Labor Day: Justice. Workers. Solidarity. Sweat of the brow. Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

Or...Picnics. Beaches. Hot dogs. TV telethons.

This is the common dilemma of Labor Day. This day of rest, set aside to honor labor, is usually remembered more for the fun things you do on a day off than for the workers it honors. This is certainly not unique—look at Memorial Day or Christmas and how easy it is to be so busy enjoying them that we forget what they're supposed to be about.

But it is good and right that we all spend a little time thinking about labor and what a life of faith calls us to in relation to the work that runs the world we're in. Having had the choice not to work on an assembly line or in the field—a choice partially bought for me by those who came before—Labor Day reminds me of those who labor still.

What do we know about the people who grow our food and ship it to us, who build our houses and cars and sew our shirts, who pick up our garbage and cleaned our college dormitory, and who may one day feed us and bathe us if we are hospitalized or in a nursing home? What do we know about how they are treated, the dangers they face in the course of their jobs, the wages they receive?

As people of faith we should both mourn and act to change things when God's words from Isaiah 65 are sinfully reversed, when people build houses but don't get to live in them, plant food but don't get enough to eat, bathe our sores but don't make enough to keep their water turned on.

The instructions in Leviticus 19 are clear about where we should stand in relation to the poor and the worker: "You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob them. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor."

Of course we all know that the call to action against injustice is relatively easy to make, but actually following through on it is hard, frustrating, often failure-filled work. And seeking labor justice, like most other kinds of justice, can feel overwhelmingly complicated.

In a world filled with massive multinational corporations, it's hard to know what thread to pull in what country in order to unravel a given mess. Jobs may be lost here when a plant is moved to Mexico, but the move may be no great benefit for the workers of Mexico either, with its astonishingly low wages and lack of air and water pollution standards.

We hear when some absolutely awful abuse of workers happens, such as the fire in the chicken plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, a few years ago that killed 25 people because the doors were locked to keep people from stealing chickens. But so many of the other ways that dignity and health and life get chipped away go unreported.

There's no at-a-glance boycott list to make labor activism easier, but our faith can offer a unique source of energy for wrestling with the intellectual and ethical implications of living, working, and consuming in this world of ours.

A housemate of mine once offered one of the most powerful graces before dinner that I've ever heard. She simply told us about a family of migrant workers she knew when she lived in a Catholic Worker house in Phoenix, Arizona. The family survived by harvesting onions. My friend described in detail the backbreaking work of doing so and this family's frequent hospitality to her after their long day of work, and how she couldn't slice onions without thinking of them. She invoked for us, in loving detail, all the hands that brought our food to our table. The meal became a sacrament of their work.

This is the big lie that the world tells us: The world is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, and the seeking of profit—nothing else. This is the truth of God: Creation is a holy web of relationship, a gift meant for all; it vibrates with the pain of all its parts; its destiny is joy.

Take anything you use every day: a shirt, your computer, your corn flakes. Think about all the people who designed it, mined or grew the raw ingredients in it, molded or sewed the pieces, and transported it.

I suggest this not as a sentimental exercise, but as holy discipline. Thinking about the things we have or the services we enjoy does not bring justice to the people who provide them. But remembering these people with gratitude, and remembering God, who is the source of all things, in that gratitude, can give us the energy to pursue that justice.

Julie Polter was an associate editor of Sojourners when this article was published.