Salt of the Earth: Social Justice news July 2000

Social justice news
July 2000

A uniform policy on sweatshops
Religion and labor's love lost—and found
Study finds two out of three on death row are wrongly convicted
Supreme Court overturns Massachusetts' Burma Law

A uniform policy on sweatshops
When Chicago parents and schoolchildren go back-to-school shopping for plaid jumpers and navy pants this fall, they can rest easy that the Catholic school uniforms are probably not made in sweatshops, thanks to a "No Sweatshop Campaign" sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

"The bottom line is that churches and parishioners are also consumers," says Bill Purcell, director of the archdiocesan office for Peace and Justice, which is overseeing the anti-sweatshop campaign.

But too often, it's difficult—if not nearly impossible—for consumers to get the information necessary to make worker-friendly choices about their purchases. Since parents often don't have many options when buying sports and school uniforms, the archdiocese wanted to ensure, as much as possible, that the clothing wasn't made in sweatshops.

The archdiocese worked with the Department of Labor, which did inspections of 14 companies in the Chicago area that manufacture or distribute school uniforms for parochial schools. All checked out OK, although "there were concerns about some stuff that was made overseas," says Purcell.

The next step is to investigate some of the off-shore companies, Purcell says. The archdiocese plans to use research from the National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights, a New York-based organization, to investigate the overseas manufacturers, including some in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

"It's really tough to follow the off-shore companies," says Purcell. "The question is, where is the end of the line?"

Still, he encourages consumers to educate themselves as best they can and use that knowledge in their purchasing decisions. "Make the best decision you can," he advises. "Don't just buy something because it's cheap. Think of the common good."

That, too, was Cardinal Francis George's message in kicking off the anti-sweatshop campaign last Lent. "Work is an expression of human dignity," the cardinal said in an April 12 statement. "People possess the basic human right to decent work and fair wages. The economy exists to serve the people, not the opposite."

In addition to investigating the uniform manufacturers, the No Sweatshop Campaign also aims to educate people in the pews and students in the classrooms about the issue. The archdiocese's Office of Catholic Education has developed a curriculum on sweatshops, child labor, and the dignity of work for students in primary grades, junior high, and high school. In addition, Purcell is working with the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice to train workers' rights advocates in Chicago parishes.

Similar campaigns are underway in the Archdioceses of Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey. The Chicago campaign was tied to the Jubilee Year, saying its attempts to ensure sweatshop-free uniforms constitute "proclaiming liberty to captives, including those enslaved to undignified working conditions."—Heidi Schlumpf

For more information:
National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice
National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights
Department of Labor
Archdiocesan news release

Religion and labor's love lost—and found
In the early history of organized labor in the United States, many faith communities worked hand-in-hand with workers to help labor secure worker rights through the formation of unions. But the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War drew the attention of the religious community away from labor.

When labor turned to religious leaders for support in the 1980s, it was largely not there. With the resurgence of organized labor in the 1990s, however, some are looking to rebuild the nationwide alliances that once existed between faith bodies and labor.

As part of this larger effort, two organizations that have been instrumental in the comeback of both labor and the labor-religion partnership—the AFL-CIO and the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice—have organized the first annual Seminary Summer, a 10-week paid internship program involving 25 graduate students in ministry. Tapping into the fact that almost every major religious body in the United States has made official statements in support of the right of workers to organize, the Seminary Summer programs draw on students from a variety of Christian and Jewish denominations.

It is the first program of its kind since the Catholic Labor Schools of the 1950s and the Presbyterian Institute of Industrial Relations, which closed in 1975. The program will involve these future religious leaders in worker campaigns for dignity, respect, and justice in the workplace.

Summer seminarians will be placed in local unions in 15 cities across the country—including the Service Employees International Union; hotel, health care, poultry worker, and other union; and local labor councils. Before going to their assignments, the participants met outside Chicago in June for orientation and training led by labor veterans. They learned about organizing strategies, the economics of labor, the history of religion and labor, media relations, union busting tactics, and the situation of religious employers.

"The union movement is a way to strive for human rights, justice, and life's defense," said Comboni Missionaries seminarian and Seminary Summer participant Antonio Nilson Camelo. "I think that when religious people join themselves with workers to defend them, they put into practice God's will."

And Eva Creydt Schulte, a student at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, said, "The gospel is a gospel of social justice—that is the reason I came to seminary. The religious community can make a tremendous impact when together we advocate social and economic justice through both words and actions."

For more information on Seminary Summer and on getting involved in next summer's event, contact the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, 1020 West Bryn Mawr Ave., 4th Fl., Chicago, IL 60660; phone: 773-728-8400.

Study finds two out of three on death row are wrongly convicted
The Supreme Court's 1972 Furman decision halted the application of the death penalty in the United States in part because of its "freakish" enforcement. Almost 30 years later—and after the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty and the execution so far of more than 300 inmates (134 of them in Texas alone)—a recent Columbia University study suggests that death penalty's freakish enforcement may only have increased over the years.

"A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases" may be the first comprehensive review of death row decisions in the U.S. Its lead author James S. Liebman, the Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Law at the Columbia University School of Law, and his staff examined the 5,760 death sentences handed down between 1973 and 1995. Liebman reports that cases reflecting nearly seven out of ten people convicted and sentenced to death rows included "substantial errors" and were ultimately thrown out or overturned by appellate courts across the nation.

Liebman's "post-conviction study" reports that 82 percent (247 out of 301) of the capital judgments that were reversed were replaced on retrial with a sentence less than death, or no sentence at all. In the latter instance, 7 percent (22/301) of the reversals for serious error resulted in a determination on retrial that the defendant was not guilty of the capital offense.

According to the study, the "overall success rate"—the proportion of capital judgments that passed the three-stage judicial inspection process—and its converse, the "overall error-rate"—the proportion of fully reviewed capital judgments that were overturned at one of the three stages due to serious error—are "crucial factors in assessing the effectiveness of the capital punishment system." Nationally, over the entire 1973-1995 period, the overall error-rate of the nation's capital punishment system was 68 percent. "Serious error" is error that substantially undermines the reliability of the guilt finding or death sentence imposed at trial, according to the study, including egregiously incompetent defense or prosecutorial misconduct such as the suppression of evidence that defendants are innocent or that their cases do not meet capital crime standards for punishment.

Use of the death penalty in the U.S. has become increasingly controversial—in part because of recent efforts by the Vatican to stress the church's resistance to the use of the death penalty and in part attributable to the high profile given the issue by the presidential candidacy of Texas Governor George W. Bush who has signed off on more than 130 death sentences in Texas, a state which leads the nation in executions. More than half of the executions carried out in the U.S. since the reinstatement of the death penalty have been conducted in Texas.

The recent decision by Illinois Governor George Ryan to initiate a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois has also raised the issue to greater public scrutiny. Although Illinois' record has been disturbing—almost as many inmates "found" innocent of the crimes they were sentenced to die for have been released as the total number executed in Illinois—the new study suggests that Illinois' performance (66 percent error rate) is no worse than most other states (68 percent average).

Among 26 death-sentencing jurisdictions with at least one case reviewed in both the state and federal courts (and from which information about all three judicial inspection stages is available):

      24 (92 percent) have overall error rates of 52 percent or higher
      22 (85 percent) have overall errors rates of 60 percent or higher;
      15 (61 percent) have overall error rates of 70 percent or higher.

Other states—Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Indiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, and California—have overall error rates of 75 percent or higher.—Kevin Clarke

For more information:
"A Broken system"
Moratorium2000

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Supreme Court overturns Massachusetts' "Burma Law"
The Supreme Court, ruling that states cannot infringe on the foreign policymaking prerogatives of the U.S. government, made it harder for states to refuse to buy from companies that do business in nations known for human-rights abuses. On June 19 the court threw out a Massachusetts law that limits state purchases from companies doing business with Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The law is pre-empted by the federal government's own sanctions against Myanmar, the justices said. "The state act is at odds with the president's intended authority to speak for the United States among the world's nations in developing a comprehensive, multilateral strategy to bring democracy to and improve human rights practices and the quality of life in Burma," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the court.

Responding to charges of widespread human rights and labor abuses, and the killing and torture of pro-democracy activists in Burma, Massachusetts legislators and other legislators around the country have been attempting to curtail government contracts with corporations with business ties to military junta in Burma. The law was frist challenged by the National Foreign Trade Council, a group that represents companies involved in foreign trade in 1998. Foreign policy must be exclusively controlled by the federal government, NFTC attorneys argued, because allowing states and cities to have a variety of foreign-trade policies would harm trade overall.

The Clinton administration supported the group, citing the federal government's "preeminent role in acting for the United States in the international arena."

Massachusetts' 1996 law says most companies doing business with Myanmar can sell goods and services to the state only if their bid is 10 percent lower than all other bids. Several months after the Massachusetts law was enacted, Congress imposed its own sanctions on Myanmar. Under the law, President Clinton in 1997 barred new U.S. investments in that country.

The nation's military leadership has ruled Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries, since 1962. In 1988, the military gunned down thousands of protesters during a crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising.

The Massachusetts law is similar to the boycotts of South Africa by many states and cities during the apartheid era. A number of state and local governments, including New York City and Los Angeles, restrict their purchases from companies doing business in countries such as Myanmar and China or the British province of Northern Ireland. During the 1980s, many states and cities protested racial apartheid in South Africa by boycotting companies that sold goods to that nation. Massachusetts argued that it had a right to apply a "moral standard" to its spending decisions.

For more information:
BurmaFund Webindex
Free Burma Coalition
Current Supreme Court decisions

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