"Labor-religion group looks at social inequity"

Local News
Daily Gazette, Monday, May 19, 2008

LATHAM :
Labor-religion group looks at social inequity
Fair trade, health care are topics

BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Michael Goot at 395-3105
or mgoot@dailygazette.net.

College of St. Rose student Scott Einbinder wants coffee drinkers to stop and think about how that java got into their cup.

Einbinder said he wants the coffee store on campus to make sure they are getting coffee through use of fair trade practices, which is when farmers that grow the crop are paid a living wage and environmentally friendly practices are used. He plans to do some organizing on campus next year to build awareness.

“I’d really like ultimately to convince the school to offer more fair trade products,” he said.

Einbinder was one of about 170 people on Sunday who attended the first day of a two-day statewide conference of the Labor-Religion Coalition titled
“Full Circle for Economic Justice.” The event was held at the New York State United Teachers building. Guest speakers discussed topics such as fair trade, universal health care, sweatshops and immigration.

Brian O’Shaughnessy, executive director of the Labor-Religion Coalition, said the organization focuses on “educating, activating and transforming” societal inequity.

“The luxury of the few is directly related and linked to the suffering of the many,” he said.

O’Shaughnessy said the purpose of the conference is to bring together people from different backgrounds to work on social issues. He believes there is a natural link between labor and religion because everybody deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

The intent is for the people attending the conference to be educated on these various topics and then train others.

“We want them to be confident enough to be able to go to another group and spread the word,” he said.

David Dyssegaard Kallick, senior fellow of the Fiscal Policy Institute, was one of the featured speakers on a session about immigration. He said upstate New York has roughly 41,000 seasonal farming workers. About two-thirds of them are undocumented. Kallick said there is a tremendous backlog of people trying to get work visas.

“There aren’t legal channels for them to come,” he said.

Selina Durio, a NYSUT board member and part of the Fair Trade Task Force, said health care is a particularly important issue as people are struggling and sometimes have to make the choice between seeing the doctor and eating.

The union is also trying to raise awareness of fair trade, she said. People should look for labels on goods that say “fair trade.”

Mike Keenan, president of the Troy Area Labor Council, said he was most interested in attending the seminar about universal health care. Families spend as much as one-quarter of their income on health insurance.

“We need a single-payer health care system or more and more people are not going to be able to afford health care,” he said.

Keenan liked the idea of the conference because he said it “merges labor with social activists who care about other people.”