First Annual Meeting of IWJ-Kansas at Newman University

After months of careful planning and organizing, Interfaith Worker Justice of Kansas, a new chapter of the national Interfaith Worker Justice organization, held its first annual meeting on January 12, 2013 at Newman University. The 25 attendees at the meeting included leaders from labor groups, churches, immigrant-rights organizations, and educational institutions in Kansas and Oklahoma, all of whom embraced the IWJ core mission to “mobilize people of faith and work advocates in support of economic justice and worker rights and the local, state, and national levels.”

Reverend Michael Livingston 

The meeting was held under the direction of Rev. David Hansen, Ph.D. the Director of IWJ Wichita, who addressed participants at the beginning of the meeting and introduced the keynote speaker, Rev. Michael Livingston, a national leader in the Interfaith Worker Justice Policy Department. In his address, Reverend Livingston highlighted the challenges that labor advocates face by turning a spotlight on New Labor, an IWJ affiliate organization that is creating worker’s centers in New York and New Jersey.

The New Labor Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Livingston reported, “is 2000 warehouse workers, mostly Latino and Haitian, who work for Wal-Mart but don’t work for Wal-Mart. . . . They are hired by temporary agencies as contract workers, but all they do is load and deliver and unload goods for Wal-Mart. Low pay, no health care benefits, unsafe working conditions, irregular hours, no paid sick days, no vacation time, no overtime, wages stolen, and don’t even think about trying to organize.”

Rev. Tim Lytle with Sister Mary Ellen Loch, CSJ    

The New Labor Center, he concluded, “is a lifeline for these workers, they are pulling themselves in from deep waters. Finding their voices, and standing up for themselves.” Reverend Livingston continued to lay out the IWJ legislative agenda, which includes comprehensive immigration reform, minimum-wage increases, and wage-theft regulation. On the local and the national level, IWJ chapters can help to move this agenda forward by bringing members of faith communities together with other community resources to support the rights and the dignity of labor.

Rev. Lytle with Sister JoAnn Mark, ASC          

Following Reverend Livingston’s address, IWJK board member, Rev. Tim Lytle of Unity Church, Wichita, presented  awards honoring the International Aerospace and Machinists Workers, Local 639 for their support of worker’s rights and to two orders of Catholic Sisters—The Adorers of the Blood of Christ and the Sisters of Saint Joseph—for their work with immigrant workers in the Wichita Community.

Meeting participants also heard an address from Ms. Sulma Arias, the Executive Director of Sunflower Community Action. Arias explained the connection between her own church-building experience and her current work for worker and immigrant justice, and she outlined the Sunflower Center’s vision for a Worker’s Center to assist immigrant workers in the Wichita area.

Ms. Sulma Arias, Executive Director of Sunflower  
Community Action, Wichita

“It’s a huge task,” Arias acknowledged, “If we are going to build it and make it a place where we can have conversations about how we are going to create strategies that will win rights for workers, we will have to look at the challenges from the eyes of immigrants through the eyes of labor, activists—it’s going to take all of us, because each one of us brings to the work an experience that is needed to make it happen.”

The meeting ended with the words of two local ministers, Lytle, who looked at the road ahead for IWJ-Kansas, and Rev. Charles Claycomb, University Methodist Church, who offered the Benediction. 

After the meeting, Rev. Hansen articulated his satisfaction with the results. “Our first annual gathering prepared the way for our next celebration on April 4 when we will bring members of the faith community and labor together to honor the life and ministry of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who, as we remember, was killed in Memphis as he stood in solidarity with the sanitation workers who were fighting for worker justice. This celebration will be held at University United Methodist Church at 7:00 PM. It is time to build a new coalition for hope and justice. It will take all of us, but we can do it.”

Participants in the first annual meeting of Interstate Workers Justice of Kansas