They need us, they owe us

workers are resisting disposability

“Because we’re undocumented, we think we have no rights. But actually, yes we do! We have to speak out more because these companies will continue to abuse us.”

Lilian Chinchilla was one of over 150 workers who marched toward the New Orleans SuperDome on July 11, 2023 to celebrate a major victory for undocumented workers. It was electric. For nearly an hour in the damp Louisiana heat, worker after worker spoke of the impact their organizing would have on their lives, and the lives of workers across the country. 

Chinchilla’s former employer, Bayou Demolition, routinely stole wages, denied overtime pay, sexually harassed undocumented female employees, and threatened all undocumented workers with both physical violence and the violence of the state if they dared to report these abuses. Louisiana subcontractors like Bayou Demolition have relied upon the labor of an underclass of migrant workers to rebuild the state since Katrina.

In January 2023, the Department of Homeland Security introduced a new policy to protect migrant workers who experience or witness workplace abuse at the hands of an employer. The provision would automatically protect complainants from immediate deportation or the revocation of their work authorization. The coalition of workers and organizers leveraged the newly-expanded whistleblower protections to organize among themselves, conduct interviews, and gather information in order to win protections and permits for their comrades. 

Workers worldwide are reasserting their humanity against the backdrop of an economic system that labels them disposable. Here in the United States, unrepresented workers are fighting for the right to form unions, while unionized workers are fighting to extract a share of decades of largely uninterrupted economic growth. Abroad, in countries with which the U.S. has exploitative arrangements to enable that growth, workers are also organizing for conditions that would support their flourishing. 

Through their organized struggles for justice, and the relationship building that entails, workers have the potential to not only win better conditions, but to revive the parts of our humanity that have been stifled during the last 40 years of neoliberal capitalism. 

Baked into the logic of our economic system is the belief that employers do us a favor by “providing” jobs. (Remember the term “job creators”?) To the contrary, jobs exist because business owners lack the capacity to operate without our labor. If there were cheaper or more efficient means of operating without us, they would. That the strike, indeed the very threat of the strike, is at all effective, proves this point. They need us. People everywhere, from adjuncts to janitors to Hollywood writers are organizing and saying in collective voices, “If they need us, then they owe us!” They’re right. 

The wages of American workers haven’t kept up with their productivity since 1973. In the 50 years from 1973 to 2013, hourly wages increased just 9.2% while productivity increased 74.4%. Everyday people have created so much value yet benefited so little. The wealth generated by that immense productivity could have been shared with employees in the form of increased pay, shorter shifts, safer conditions, greater retirement contributions, family and medical leave, and poured back into the country’s well being via taxation. Instead they captured it as profit.

“Profit” isn’t a neutral term. After expenses—worker and owner salary, debts, materials and the like—whatever money is left over is the surplus. If both of our contributions were necessary, then there is no logically necessary reason why owners and shareholders should pocket the surplus as profit. That’s just the way it is, but it doesn’t have to be. While the average American works more hours now than at any time since those statistics have been kept, and while most of us can’t afford a $1,000 emergency, CEO pay is up 1,460% since 1978. That is theft. 

Mario Mendoza, Familias Unidas En Accion. Image: Jambalaya News Louisiana.

I truly believe that participation in this struggle, in a spirit of principled solidarity with fellow workers, can be divinely inspired. That God is stirring the hearts of everyday people across industries to recapture a world built around their exploitation and exclusion. 

At the rally celebrating the coalition victory against Bayou Demolition, Familias Unidas En Accion co-founder, Mario Mendoza, concluded his remarks saying, “Today, I’m happy because I know that innumerable workers without papers can say ‘We have rights.’ And when the people say this, it’s out of the conviction that we have fought for a community. And we’ll keep fighting to empower our families.” Through their active participation in the struggle with their friends and comrades, people know that they are fighting for more than money. 

Here we see a vision of what it means to be human in conditions that thrive on an inhuman submissiveness. People filled with the divine breath that connects us to everything and everyone resisted the atomization that oppressive systems impose upon us. When told that they were alone, that they had no rights because of their citizenship, they built power among themselves and with folks who were sympathetic to them. They insisted on solidarity when only isolation was offered to them.

Deep loneliness is a hallmark of social life under twenty-first century capitalism. Against the backdrop of this near-universal social isolation that long preceded pandemic lockdowns, everyday people are building transformative relationships through collective action and shared reflection (praxis). At the same time, the deepening of relationships enriches the content of their action and reflection. Bosses are creating a world where domination and subordination are the norms. Organizing workers are providing concrete examples of the egalitarianism found in the best of our traditions.

Religions that Resist

This is where I show my hand. I’m always wondering how I’m supposed to do the thing that I’m already doing. It’s an annoying, though sometimes helpful, feature of my personality. In a moment of trying to figure out what the hell I’m up to here at Religion in Revolt, I returned to James Cone’s A Black Theology of Liberation for inspiring procrastination. He talks about the task of the Christian theologian in a way that still resonates with me and that feels universally applicable: 

The language of theology challenges societal structures because it is inseparable from the suffering community…Whatever theology says about God and the world must arise out of its sole reason for existence as a discipline: to assist the oppressed in their liberation.

The masses of people are going through life in the gutter. Whatever we say about faith, God, the universe has to meet them there, has to identify with them, has to work to get them out, and has to ensure that no one takes their place. Our faiths have to let people know they are not crazy for being repulsed by the indignities they experience. Our faiths have to point them in the direction of the forces actually responsible for that. We have to take their side.

In solidarity,

Dwayne