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Worker Justice Biography
[Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]
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Conversation with Kim Bobo and Lou Weeks Daniel Pawlus: And now, we’re joined by Kim Bobo. Kim, thanks for being with us today. Kim Bobo: Daniel, great to be here! Daniel Pawlus: I love your passion in that segment we just saw! I just wanted to start, for myself and perhaps others, to learn a little bit more about Interfaith Worker Justice. How did this organization come to be and what’s your main, primary mission? Kim Bobo: Well, I was involved in some labor issues and realized that often the religious community wasn’t involved. I had grown up in the church. It was central to who I was. I had worked for Break for the World for ten years. I knew the power of the religious community. And I knew we were involved in hunger issues, we are involved in homeless issues, but we all knew that people were hungry or without homes because they didn’t have jobs or they didn’t have jobs that paid enough, right? So it just seemed to me logical that the religious community should be on the front lines of those jobs and wage questions, as well as housing and homelessness and hunger issues. So I started doing some work trying to involve the religious community and people wanted to help. They wanted to be involved. So I first built a group here in Chicago that’s now called Arise Chicago and then we started building groups around the country and then other groups wanted to connect to us. Before you know it, there was a network called Interfaith Worker Justice that is really engaging the religious community around the country on low wage worker issues. Daniel Pawlus: Fantastic. Lillian Daniel: Kim, it’s funny when people find out that my husband and I have these jobs; that I’m a minister and he’s a labor union organizer. They’ll often say, “Wow, what a bizarre combination!” And to us it doesn’t seem bizarre. There are many ways in which our work connects. You probably get the same question: why involve religion and the labor movement? Where do you see the intersection? Kim Bobo: You know, the core values are the same, right? It’s we want to help people. We want to make things better for people. Now, I often say that the things people don’t like about the religious community and the labor community, those are similar, too. We don’t always live up to our values. We sometimes talk more than we actually do. So the same things that are weaknesses are also our strengths. I mean, we really have some core values: help and love your neighbors as yourself. I mean that’s central to the religious community. It’s also central to the labor movement. The sense of solidarity, the sense of sharing, the sense of really struggling together, those are really core values for both communities. I can see why people question it, but it makes sense to me. Daniel Pawlus: So on the shared values piece . . . I work with an interfaith organization called Interfaith Youth Core. We often talk about how bringing together different faith traditions has a social capital aspect to it. How does that relate to the work that you’re doing across faith lines with Interfaith Worker Justice? Kim Bobo: Well, actually one of the first meetings I did in Wichita, Kansas, we brought together religious folks and labor folks who work in the same town—and, you know, Wichita is not that big—and they started talking about why they did the work and both sides started crying because they had no idea that there was this whole other set of folks who shared their core values and yet they realized they weren’t working together. I think that what’s deep down important to us, we share those values and so finding ways to connect with labor leaders and religious leaders and bring those two communities together it’s just more power for the work. Lillian Daniel: And, of course, the workers who are in these struggles are all people of faith, too… Kim Bobo: Absolutely. Lillian Daniel: …representing a whole diversity of religious backgrounds. Kim Bobo: And we often see their work as a sense of call. You talk to nursing home workers, they see it as sense of call to be there. Daniel Pawlus: How do you facilitate that? It’s a dialogue obviously, but you get out there and take action, right? You’re on the street as we saw in the clip. How do you get people mobilized like that? Kim Bobo: I think it is hearing workers stories, right? It’s not some ideological thing. It’s really…you hear the story of workers and you’re moved to do something about it. You may have never been on a picket line before, but if workers need you to be there you want to be there. In fact, the clip you saw was from the Hyatt hotel. I went and I heard the stories of Hyatt workers who were not being treated fairly, who loved their jobs, who loved the company but wanted to be paid fairly and wanted to be treated fairly and wanted to have a reasonable workload. It made me want to stand with them. I think the way to engage more people in this is really to have people hear the stories. And somehow as religious communities, we allow people to often tell their family stories and their community stories, but sometimes we don’t have quite enough space to tell people’s work stories. Lillian Daniel: So one of the stories I remember from that same struggle was that when the workers were out there it was a record heat wave that day and the company turned on heat lamps on the protesters. Kim Bobo: Outrageous Lillian Daniel: That was an outrageous story and yet the religious community was able to speak to that and to name that as a justice issue. I think it was a very important moment in that. Kim Bobo: Right. My experience is for workers to have their faith leaders standing with them really affirms what they are doing, that really they are doing something that’s not really just for them. It’s really for all of their co-workers and really for the whole community. Any time we’re standing up to make things better for a large group of people, it really makes all of us better. Lillian Daniel: And now we’re joined by Lou Weeks. When he was at Yale University, Lou became a student supporter of thousands of Yale workers who had gone on strike and, shortly after his graduation, he became a Union Organizer. He currently serves in Chicago as the Organizing Director for Local 1, Unite-Here, which represents over 300,000 members in the hotel, gaming, airport, and food service industries. Lou is also, I am happy to add, my husband. Lou, it’s wonderful to have you here. Lou Weeks: Thanks. Lillian Daniel: Share a story with us about the way in which you see the Holy Spirit or the work of the spirit happening in the lives of workers or on the picket line. Lou Weeks: You’re going straight for the hard one! Lou Weeks: So when you are on a picket line it’s all out there. I loved what C. J. had said about going to Wisconsin and having her wedding re-celebrated on the picket line of the Staley locked out workers. There are moments when everything is at stake and you don’t have secrets any more and you’re kind of raw. It’s very common that folks will pray on the line or folks will take care of each other on the line or give each other money or take care of each other’s children. Things in normal life that don’t happen, but when you go on strike can happen. I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of that and have been honored enough to lead some of those struggles. Lillian Daniel: I remember our own children were both infants marching on the picket line and were cared for in those ways. I’m sure you have similar experiences, Kim. Kim Bobo: They march around the dinner table saying, “No more spinach!” Lillian Daniel: Yeah. The children of labor people are not shy about asking for what they want. Lou Weeks: I remember I used to take you on dates and go to demonstrations and pretty soon you started saying, “That’s not a date!” Lillian Daniel: No, that wasn’t a date but it can be exciting, the sense of community and the way people come together. It’s incredible how in the labor movement people are able to cross so many of the divides, some of those divides being religious divides. What are some examples that you all have seen of that? Kim Bobo: We regularly see interfaith prayers at events. So it’s Christians and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews. Frankly, some folks who may not agree on a set of other things, but in terms of labor and wages and workers, all of our traditions are very clear. I was meeting with an Evangelical pastor recently and he said to me, “Well, do we have to agree on all issues?” And I said, “Absolutely not.” We need to agree that workers should be treated with respect and dignity. And, really, that crosses all of our faith traditions. Lillian Daniel: So we may not agree on the ordination of women or gay marriage, but we can come together on that issue. Lou Weeks: In our union, which is the hospitality workers union, a lot of the folks who are servers or who work in the door stand or the bell stand at the hotels, really are curious about meeting other people and it applies when they get to meet their own co-workers, as well. So people are excited to have new experiences and eat new food. Folks will make something that they made at home and bring it in and folks share it. It’s really part of the human spirit and it shouldn’t be a surprise that the immigrants that work in our industry share that interest, as well. Lillian Daniel: In a given week in your organizing here in the city, what are the different nationalities you come across? Lou Weeks: Dozens and dozens. At Loyola, where we just organized the cafeteria workers, there are two hundred workers. People come from twenty countries and speak sixteen different languages just in that small group. It’s what we’re seeing with globalization now. It’s an ongoing challenge to me. I can’t speak any language but English and Spanish. I’m learning how to do chanting in Cantonese because that happens to be the people that are on the picket line. Kim Bobo: That’s great. Lillian Daniel: Some people would ask the question, why would religious leaders get near organized labor? There are so many flaws in unions and struggles like that. There’s a real hesitancy there. How do you make the case and how do you help religious leaders to navigate that? Kim Bobo: Religious communities want to help people. I think this really comes out of wanting to care for people. In my own church, we do a soup kitchen and so we’re always collecting money. But we don’t have the power as religious leaders and as individuals to really raise people’s wages and benefits. The work that was done in Houston with CSIU where there were no unions in the janitorial sector . . . . everybody made minimal wage. The union came in and organized five thousand janitors and for the first time ever, people got health care and they got their wages raised and they got paid for all the work that they did. I couldn’t have done that out of my church. You couldn’t do that individually, but with a union and by working together you can help, and the religious community, by standing with those workers in the union, could help raise wages and benefits for five thousand workers. Lillian Daniel: Kim, I loved your comparison earlier in our conversation between unions and the institutional church, saying they have some of the same struggles; they’re flawed organizations, don’t always live up to their standards. You can also say that both have shrunk in recent decades. Kim Bobo: Absolutely. Lillian Daniel: So the question would be, are unions relevant today? Some people would argue they had their moment, they helped people, but what do they do now? Have they outlasted their time? Lou Weeks: I don’t think so at all. I actually think it’s a great time to organize. I think that people are being hurt in a lot of ways these days. Some of the issues of poverty that you spoke about earlier and that C. J. spoke about visiting people in Cabrini-Green . . . . when you’re really organizing you visit people in their houses, you get to see the conditions people live in. So this myth or this common idea that unions use to have their place, those folks haven’t been recently to visit any people that I know of. Anybody who would would say, wow, something really needs to change here. People are working hard and they can’t pay their bills and they can’t feed their kids. Kim Bobo: People at my church, they talk about, oh, I work at a grocery store but I wish I worked at Dominic’s because if I worked at Dominic’s I would have benefits. The reason they have benefits is because it’s a union grocery store. So, again, you can talk to low income people and the difference between those who have unions and those who don’t is so significant. Lillian Daniel: Help us see into those peoples lives. Give us some stories about the kind of things that the workers are going through that they come and talk to you about. Lou Weeks: We were organizing a hotel here in Chicago and visited a family that was from Togo. I went and house visited them, knocked on their door, and introduced myself as a union organizer and came in. It was a one-bedroom apartment on the north side of Chicago and there were about twelve people living in the place. Those folks were…they rolled up mattresses and sleeping bags against the wall. There were a couple of kids on laptops who were doing their schoolwork. They were people who had been able to move here luckily because of their family and they were going to make it. They were struggling and it was a very difficult struggle there at that place. But folks who come over form Togo who live in conditions like that are much, much tougher than the hotel companies that they are working for, actually. Same thing for other workers who come over from Mexico, who maybe cross through the desert, and for other folks who’ve had to come over from China in the hold of a ship and now we’re organizing. Those are very, very strong people and I don’t think it’s a hard call to say that we should, as people of faith, support them and really look out for their interests and their families and be on their side. Lillian Daniel: And the thing that both of you and also C. J. Hawking are saying is the importance of hearing people’s stories and getting out of your own little world or your own bubble wherever you are located. One of the very exciting programs that your organization is doing is taking seminarians, people who are preparing to be parish ministers, and exposing them to these issues through the seminary summer. Can you say something about what you do with those people? Kim Bobo: It’s a great program. We place these seminary and rabbinic students around the country, working both with unions and with worker centers. They go on picket lines, they go on home visits, they hear workers stories. It’s interesting because at the end of the summer they come back and they say, you know, I thought I was going to be ministering to people but, in fact, they were ministering to me, because I knew how to talk about God but I didn’t know really how to live out God in people’s lives. Lillian Daniel: What an amazing program because, say, that rabbinical student has this experience, they might go out and serve a synagogue in a wealthy suburb, but they’ve heard those stories that Lou was describing. Kim Bobo: It is transforming. Right now, so many of our seminary students come out of fairly affluent homes. They don’t come out of working class homes. They don’t come out of experience with union. So their only experience of unions is the negative things they might read about in the newspaper. So it really challenges their stereotype view on unions. It’s really significant. Lillian Daniel: I’m seeing a lot of passion among younger people in the ministry and around these issues. What’s pulling them in all of the sudden if they were raised in affluence? Kim Bobo: Well, I think the fact that we have 9% unemployment and 17% under employment and unemployment combined. Lou Weeks: And they’re going to have a lower standard of living than their parents for the first time in American history. Kim Bobo: That’s right. I think the jobs crisis is really drawing lots of new people. And, frankly, the attacks on public sector workers —people may think, oh, I’m not all that keen on unions—but the attack on the fundamental rights of workers to organize. We don’t want to live in a society where you don’t have the ability to come together with your coworkers and make a difference. Lillian Daniels: That’s a wonderful reminder that if there’s possibly a silver lining to the economic troubles we’ve had it’s that these young people are turning to questions of justice. |
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Lou Weeks grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and attended Yale University where he received his Bachelor's Degree. While attending Yale, Lou became a student supporter of the thousands of Yale workers who had gone on strike. Shortly after graduation, Lou became a Union Organizer. He currently serves in Chicago as the Organizing Director for Local 1, Unite-Here, the hospitality workers union. Unite-Here represents more than 300,000 members in the hotel, gaming, airport, and food service industries.
