Labor Day weekend is often a slow time for congregations. Members are attending family gatherings. Parents are getting children ready for school. Neglected summer projects are undertaken or (like my garden) abandoned until next summer. Aside from the occasional Labor Day parade, few Labor Day activities seem to have anything to do with honoring labor. Labor Day weekend nonetheless offers congregations an opportunity to lift up the values of work and reflect on our religious teachings on labor.

Labor Day was first celebrated in 1882 in New York City. The idea of a labor day spread throughout the nation with 23 states passing laws honoring the occasion. In 1894, Congress made it a national holiday. American Federation of Labor records show a resolution in 1909 proclaiming the Sunday before Labor Day as Labor Sunday, "dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement," though many congregations were holding Labor Sundays at least by 1905.

Work is central to each of our lives. Most of us spend more waking hours at work than we do with our families. We certainly spend more time at work than we do in religious services. Working people and how they fare are central to the development and prosperity of the nation. Tackling poverty requires us to figure out how all workers can earn wages and benefits that can support their families.

Despite the centrality of work to our lives, few of our congregations focus much on values related to work. We don't preach about work, offer classes on integrating religious values into work, train new workers about worker rights, or advocate justice in the workplace. Too many congregations have limited God's purview to the family and congregational life, when in fact fundamental values questions are played out in the workplace each and every day.

Labor in the Pulpits (Labor on the Bimah, Labor in the Minbar) is an organized program in dozens of cities that places labor speakers in congregations to talk about the shared values between the labor movement and the religious community. It is coordinated jointly by Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and the AFL-CIO. Even congregations that don't officially have labor speakers can take advantage of the congregational resources prepared for Labor Day weekend.

Although Labor Day is right around the corner, it's not too late to put some labor back in Labor Day weekend services. Your congregation can:

• Preach about the value of work. Review your tradition's teachings on labor and work through your faith body's Web site or IWJ's.
  
• Invite a labor leader to talk about the shared values between the labor movement and the religious community.
  
• Honor its own workers (such as the secretary, custodian) in public ways or through IWJ's Honor a Worker program.
  
• Include inserts honoring work in the bulletin. IWJ offers free Labor Day-specific inserts as well as others that can be used throughout the year.
  
• Schedule a fall or spring adult study program on worker issues. IWJ offers a congregational study guide to New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse's essential new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. In addition, I have a book coming out in November, Wage Theft in America: A Prevention Manual, which includes a four-session congregational study guide. (E-mail cjunia@iwj.org if you'd like to get on the notification list.)

Labor issues may not be discussed much in our congregations, but they should be. Work is central to each of us, to our nation's prosperity, and to the possibility of ending poverty. Use this Labor Day as an opportunity to begin reinserting the core values of work and economic justice into the preaching, teaching, and living out of God's vision in our congregations.

Kim Bobo is the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a national network that engages the religious community on issues affecting low-wage workers. A columnist for Religion Dispatches, she is the author of Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing and a co-author of Organizing for Social Change, the most widely-used manual on progressive activism in the country.

During this BBQ season we have to carefully consider what products are apart of our seasonal celebrations. Recently I attended the DC campaign kick-off for the Justice at Smithfield Campaign. "Smithfield Foods is the largest pork processor and producer in the world, the fourth largest turkey processor and fifth largest beef processor in the U.S." In the early 1990's Smithfield opened its Tar Heel, North Carolina plant, with 5,500 workers who slaughter and process 32,000 hogs per day. The Tar Heel plant is not unionized and overall only about 56% of Smithfield pork processing plant employees are unionized.

Though raised in Brooklyn, NY, my family hails from North Carolina which makes this campaign of personal importance to me. At the campaign kick-off two young women testified about mistreatment at the Tar Heel plant. A 22 year-old woman spoke of developing such a serious case of carpal tunnel syndrome that she can no longer lift more than 15 pounds. The testimony of this woman had a profound effect on me because I saw myself in her face. At 22 years-old I was a recent college graduate excitedly planning my future. I did not have to worry about an injury that could leave me disabled for life. If my grandparents remained in North Carolina instead of migrating to Brooklyn, NY, I could have easily been one of the Smithfield workers. What separates me from the workers at Smithfield?

Some of the tasks at the Tar Heel plant include cutting the skin off of frozen meat as it comes down the line, a task that is especially difficult when having to work at breakneck speeds. As stated in the Human Rights Watch report: Blood Sweat and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants:

Many workers have painful reactions to conditions, but they do not act for fear of losing their jobs. In this report one employee is quoted as saying 'I am sick at work with a cold and breathing problems and my arms are always sore. But I am afraid to say anything about this because I am afraid they will fire me.'

Workers have also spoken of sexual harassment and racism. How can working conditions like this exist in our modern society? What is the role of race, class and economics in the Smithfield worker struggle?

As I reflect on the Justice at Smithfield campaign I am reminded of a common request made during the blessing of a meal--"may God bless the hands of those who have prepared our food." As we continue this season of BBQ's let us remember the workers of Smithfield when we bless our meals by asking God to bless their hands and their struggle.

Onleilove Alston is a native of Brooklyn, New York, and serves Sojourners in the Policy and Organizing department as a Beatitudes Fellow. She is a student in the dual M.Div/MSW program at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. In NYC she organizes with the Poverty Initiative and New York Faith & Justice.