NEWS STORY: Los Angeles clergy rally in `David vs. Goliath’ labor fight

c. 1999 Religion News Service LOS ANGELES _ Borrowing the underdog image of the biblical David, Los Angeles clergy have thrown in with union leaders and workers against the University of Southern California _ the”Goliath”clerics accuse of”a raw exercise of power”against university food and housing workers. On Tuesday (Aug. 31) more than 120 Los Angeles […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES _ Borrowing the underdog image of the biblical David, Los Angeles clergy have thrown in with union leaders and workers against the University of Southern California _ the”Goliath”clerics accuse of”a raw exercise of power”against university food and housing workers.

On Tuesday (Aug. 31) more than 120 Los Angeles and national clergy issued a”David and Goliath Statement”in support of the 360 workers of Local 11 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees (H.E.R.E.) union who have been without a contract for more than four years.


Topping the list of signers were the Rev. Jesse Jackson of the National Rainbow Coalition and the Rev. James Lawson, co-worker of Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s.

A delegation of Los Angeles clergy backing the statement strode the shady sidewalks of USC on Tuesday to present the document and list of signers to university president Dr. Steven Sample.

The representatives were met by two administrative assistants, university security, and the promise the statement would be put on the president’s desk. Sample himself was unavailable, school officials said.

After delivering the statement, the clergy joined workers in a demonstration on the edge of the USC campus.

Brandishing a recent Time magazine write-up lauding USC as the nation’s No. 1 university, the Rev. Altagracia Perez of St. Phillips Episcopal Church reported the president’s rebuff of the clergy and said the university’s intransigence”tarnishes its reputation.” Demonstrators proceeded to a nearby intersection, where a group took up positions around a colorful banner reading”Justice for USC Workers.”Helmet-clad Los Angeles police arrested 24 demonstrators for”failing to disperse,”according to police officials. Supporters forced behind police lines yelled support for the arrested demonstrators as they were escorted one-by-one to a waiting vehicle.

Two clerics, Perez and the Rev. Sylvester Warsaw of First New Christian Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, were among those detained.

A statement from the university and the David and Goliath document labeled subcontracting and job security as at the center of the conflict.


The university insists that to maintain the”flexibility”necessary to”adjust to changes in the economy and market conditions”it cannot”guarantee employment,”according to an Aug. 30 letter to faculty and staff from Dr. Thomas Moran, vice president of business affairs.

While some Local 11 members oppose subcontracting, H.E.R.E. media liaison Josh Kamensky said the union would allow the university to subcontract provided current workers keep their jobs.

Acknowledging USC as”a pioneer and an innovator in the fields of science, law, business, and medicine,”the David and Goliath signers called the university to”be a servant of the common good,”seeking an end to”focusing on property values and the bottom line over and above human dignity.” For the clergy, the labor dispute is a”moral issue”that”ought to prick our consciences.””We want to call the university to justice with the moral force of all our faiths,”said the Rev. Susan Craig, a statement signer and pastor of the United University Church adjacent to the USC campus.”USC itself espouses values that you could only call spiritual values,”including”the dignity of the human persons”and”the dignity of work,”she said.

Another signer, the Rev. Mike Walsh, associate pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, said the statement is”calling USC to be faithful to its own stated principles and values.” Craig and Walsh, who helped draft the David and Goliath Statement, adapted it from a version used in a dispute between the union and Yale University in 1996.

But Craig said the California clergy sought a different end to the story than the biblical account _ reconciliation with instead of the defeat of”Goliath.” The clergy want a conclusion, the statement reads,”in which no one is crushed and in which Goliath realizes that power must not be used to oppress others, but to protect those with less.”DEA END PARKS

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