Some good news out of Texas

As reported in NYT, "Union organizers have obtained what they say is majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors."

In an era when unions typically face frustration and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to the Houston campaign as a model.

Note that SEIU is one of the breakaways from the AFL-CIO. The secessionists are the future of labor.

With its campaign to organize the janitors, the union has focused on two groups it says are pivotal if labor is to grow again: low-wage workers and immigrants. The janitors, nearly all of them immigrants,
earn just over $100 a week on average, usually working part time for $5.25 an hour.

Focusing on these two constituencies is what has made labor in Los Angeles such a force. Los Angeles is the only major area where private sector union membership is increasing. They should send TX AFL-CIO staff there to learn the model and bring it back home.

The union announced its campaign last April, but two years earlier, it sent a community liaison to Houston who helped line up backing from the city's mayor, several congressmen and dozens of clergymen, including the Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph A. Fiorenza. The archbishop even celebrated a special Mass for janitors in August and spoke at the union's kickoff rally, telling the janitors that God was unhappy that they earned so little and did not have health coverage.

Way to go Bill White, for backing this. And also this archbishop. We need more religious voices speaking for the left.

Which brings up... Dave McNeely's latest column asking if "our state and national leaders are truly Christian." The answer, No.

To live a life Christ would have applauded, we need to take care of the least of those in our society—the poor, the downtrodden, the underprivileged, the blind, the marginalized, old folks, and most of all, he children just getting started in life.

[...]

Think about the recent proposed budget cuts in Washington for services designed to help people at the bottom of the income scale. Meanwhile, think of all the tax cuts designed primarily to benefit not the needy, but the wealthy. Think about the habit in Texas to approve ever more regressive taxes—like a higher and broader sales tax, and gambling -that shift the tax load those who can least afford it.

Think of balancing a budget shortfall in Texas by cutting programs aimed at those who need our help most.

For McNeely that's pretty ballsy.