Faith, Health Care and the IAM Strike

This Sunday morning people in the Wichita awoke to the news that 75 percent of the members of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union, Local Lodge 639, who work at the Bombardier LearJet plant voted to go on strike. The strike is scheduled to begin on Monday morning. I ask people of all faiths to hold the workers, the managers and their families in prayer today and throughout the coming days.

Based on news reports one of the sticking issues is the length of the contract. The union wants three years and management wants five years. The other issue is health care.

Survey data reports that health care is the second most important issue for likely voters in the 2012 election, trailing only the economy. Health care is also a core value for all faith traditions. All major faith traditions believe in human dignity and all advocate that adequate, affordable, accessible, proper health care as a basic human right. As people of faith we envision a society in which each person has proper health care. While there are differences among and within faith traditions, there is no disagreement that national health care is a basic right and health care reform is needed. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not have a national health care program, and until this is achieved we must do all we can to keep inclusive heath care available and affordable.

My own faith tradition, the United Church of Christ, draws inspiration from the well-known story of the Good Samaritan (the Gospel of Luke 10: 29-37), which it calls “a clear case for universal health care.”  The command of Jesus to follow the example of the Samaritan in this parable means that we cannot rest until proper health care is provided for everyone.

A recent online article by Eleni Towns, a Research Assistant with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress speaks to this issue. Her article, titled “The New Value Voters: Health Care,” is an excellent introduction for a congregational study on what different faith traditions advocate for health care— www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2012/10/03/40. I am indebted to her for the following summary.

Faith communities have long been on the front lines when it comes to providing direct services, advocating for health care reform and providing a moral vision for it. Roman Catholic hospitals account for more than one-fifth of all admissions in the country. Muslim-run clinics in Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles serve all who come, regardless of the ability to pay. Several faith-based health care organizations around the country do the same. In addition, many congregations sponsor health screenings, nutrition education programs, and parish nurse or counseling services.

In 2009 members of Faith for Health, a coalition of more than 30 mainline and evangelical Protestant communions, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists came together to support the Affordable Care Act. In August of 2009 this same coalition sponsored a conference call with President Obama that included 140,000 people of faith.The coalition also sponsored visits to more than 100 members of Congress. In addition there were local campaigns and forums sponsored by faith communities around the country. In September of this year, 2012, more than 100 national and state faith leaders called on governors and state legislators to expand Medicaid programs to cover millions of low-income Americans.

Organized labor and faith communities are telling us that it is time to lift up the bottom line. In an era when our humanity is pitted against economic determinism and political fatalism we must come together and craft a new economic and a political policy that is not divorced from the daily reality of our lives and the welfare of our community. In the Preface to Mis-Measuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up (New York: The New Press, 2010), the former French President Nicholas Sarkozy writes, “We cannot focus solely on the data that market supplies us. By acting as though the market were the source of all truth, you wind up believing it.” While statistical indicators are important and indeed necessary, by themselves they do not and cannot give us a sense of meaning, responsibility and vision. Put otherwise, the market is not the measure of our well-being; our well-being is the measure of the market.

Now is the time to speak out and speak up for a health care system that reflects the values of human dignity, shared responsibility, compassion, stewardship of resources and concern for our neighbors.

Rev.David Hansen, Ph.D.

Executive Director/Organizer

Interfaith Worker Justice Kansas