The AFL-CIO - with 68 national union affiliates (including the BMWE), nearly 600 central labor councils and 51 state labor federations - is committed to building a movement of workers for economic justice through organizing, bargaining, political, legislative and community campaigns in coalition with community, civil rights and religious organizations.

One of the most fruitful new coalitions is with the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice. The NICWJ was formed in 1996 to help strengthen relationships and to actively involve the religious community in fighting for justice in the workplace.

NICWJ is a network of people of faith that calls upon our religious values in order to educate, organize and mobilize the religious community in the United States on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits and working conditions for workers, especially low-wage workers. The NICWJ is a private, nonprofit organization supported by foundations, grants and individual donations.

Over the Labor Day weekend last year, the AFL-CIO and NICWJ co-sponsored a "Labor in the Pulpits" program, linking local congregations with union members who came as people of faith to speak at worship services about conditions of working people and the union movement. Union speakers addressed an estimated 100,000 congregants at over 600 worship services in 450 congregations. Labor in the Pulpits events were held in 38 states and over 80 cities across the United States.

Plans for Labor Day 2000 are now being worked on and it is hoped that the number of congregations and worship services where Labor in the Pulpits speakers will be heard will greatly increase. For more information and how you can help, contact your AFL-CIO Central Labor Council or the national office at 815 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, 202-637-5280 (phone), 202-637-5012 (fax).

Or you can contact the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice at 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 4th Floor, Chicago, IL 60660, 773-728-8400 (phone), 773-728-8409 (fax), info@nicwj.org (e-mail), www.nicwj.org (website). If you are interested in becoming a member of the NICWJ you can contact them at one of the addresses just given. One of the benefits of membership in NICWJ includes a one-year subscription to Faith Works, published six times a year. This newsletter is jam-packed with information; it not only provides news about religion and labor working together around the country but lists the network of local interfaith groups concerned with labor issues and offers many suggestions on what you can do to help work for worker justice.

Labor in the Pulpits was the springboard for the AFL-CIO's greatly increased efforts to build religion-labor alliances. Another of those efforts co-sponsored with the NICWJ, was the National Religion-Labor Conference "Forging Partnerships" which was held October 7-10, 1999, just before last year's AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles.

At the Conference over 300 religious and labor activists worked on a plan for building a movement together. The Conference was the first of its kind to bring together religion and labor leaders in more than ten years. (Eight-hour, unedited, videos of the conference were created by Justice Vision and are available for $12. To order, call Ralph Cole at 213-747-6345 or e-mail democracyu@aol.com.)

"What we are trying to do is to build a strong alliance between the religious community and the labor community," said Sweeney. "Ours is a very natural alliance. Both are guided by core values of the dignity of work, and by a sense of justice. People of faith are coming together with us because they understand it's a moral issue. The difference is that for the first time, religious and worker groups have developed a comprehensive plan to achieve social justice."

"The alliance is natural, growing out of the sacredness of work," added the Rev. Joseph Lowery, former Southern Christian Leadership Conference president and longtime colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "There's something immoral about enjoying the fruits of a product and ignoring the rights of those who produce it."