Ephesians and Workers

Bible Study 4

Ephesians and Workers

Ann Wansbrough

Many Christians do Bible study as if we can find out what the Bible is saying through either intellectual analysis or pious reading, without any reference to the reality of today. That sort of Bible study is very abstract. It does not illuminate life. It does not transform our lives. It does not help us to deal with the difficult issues which face women, nations or the world today.

My work as a minister of the word in the Uniting Church in Australia requires that I research social, economic and political issues of justice, and help the church determine policy and action on those issues. I have to relate faith and reality. I have found a particular method useful in this work.

For this study I have chosen an area of my work which seems to me relevant to women and to many of the countries of Asia – unions and workers rights.

1. Looking at Reality

Among workers in Australia, the most disadvantaged group is migrant women workers of non-English speaking background. They have the least opportunity and least resources to know and defend their rights as workers. They often lack the knowledge and the time to organise. Many migrant women have poor English language skills and understand little of their rights as workers, the award system, or what their employers tell them. That is why they need unions to be involved in the process of negotiating awards – to provide corporately the resources they lack as individuals.

Women earn, on average, only 65% of what men earn, because sc many work in the lowest paid jobs and so many can only work part-time because of inadequate child care services.

Photo: YTJ

In Australia we have industrial trade unions – unions which have as members all the people working in related types of jobs in many different companies. These are large unions, which derive most of their power from their size, and from the fact that if they call a strike, it can affect many different companies. These unions negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of all workers who do the type of work covered by the union – the resulting agreements we call "awards." These are approved by the courts and are then binding on employers for all employees, whether or not they belong to the union.

The government in my state of Australia, New South Wales, last year tried to legislate to introduce "enterprise unions" – unions based on the company for which people work. These would be much smaller unions and they could agree to working conditions and wages which are less than those required by the industrial award.

Because they would be small, they would not have the resources which present unions have.

The NSW government is a government based on business interests rather than the interests of workers. This leads us to be suspicious about their motives – they want to do what is good for business, but will it be good for workers, especially for women workers?

2. Ideological Suspicion

This leads us to ask the question: can this proposal be trusted? What clues are there that it might be unjust?

Some of the points which arouse our suspicion include:

* Idea comes from political party, not workers.

* The political parties involved represent business interests rather than workers' interests.

* The idea does not come from the workers who are most likely to be exploited – women and migrant workers from non-English speaking backgrounds.

* The people involved in determining the policy are mainly men.

* The government says that "enterprise agreements" can benefit workers by giving them wages and conditions better than those in the awards – but this sort of agreement is already possible. We do not need new legislation to do this. So why do we need the new legislation?

* The political parties involved have a history of being antiunion and anti-worker, and of criticizing the power of unions.

* The political parties involved rely for their financial support on donations from business.

* The viewpoint of business people in Australia is that decisions should be based on "what is good for the economy" (what is good for business – what makes the most profit) rather than what is good for people.

The Uniting Church has already challenged some of the attitudes which underlie economic policy in Australia. We have suggested that social goals are important. Some Anglicans have also challenged economic decisions. Last week the Catholic bishops conference released a document about wealth which also challenged the idea that what is good for business is good for people. So the work of the church about economic justice reinforces our suspicion of what the NSW government proposes.

Obviously migrant welfare groups, unions and the churches have good reason to be suspicious of the motives of the NSW government. So these groups came together in the Social Justice, for Migrant Workers Coalition to examine the problem and to help inform migrant workers about what was being proposed. We also lobbied politicians. We were able to delay the legislation, but not prevent it.

3. Ideological Critique

The NSW government claims that what it is proposing will be good for workers as well as business. They claim that it will improve social justice for workers. We found therefore that we needed to do an ideological critique. A Catholic priest and myself were asked to help the coalition understand the nature of social justice. I will use only my analysis here.

One of the reasons for the-struggle of workers is that there are at least two quite different understandings of social justice. I will sketch them for you, and then use the Bible to critique each

of them, to see which is more appropriate for Christians and which should therefore guide the work the church does with workers.

The first view is the view of business. It is not simply the view of business in Australia. Rather it is an ideology which is held by transnational corporations, major banks and governments, and which controls many of the economic decisions made by countries around the world. It is individualistic, materialistic, competitive and elitist. This view of social justice:

* assumes everyone begins life "equal" (no matter where they are born, how poor or rich their nation or their village or town or their parents are, and no matter what their personal abilities and gifts are);

* sees the individual as the basic unit of society;

* sees competition as the proper relationship between people;

* sees workers as simply another factor in production – dehumanises people to the level of raw materials, site, taxes;

* sees the aim of life as being to acquire money, property, status, power;

* believes that when people acquire money, property, status, power, it is the reward for effort;

* defines justice as non-interference in the market;

* sees the government as having a minimum role everything should be determined by "the market" – economy has its own laws which we must not resist;

* rejects any vision of justice as the basis of economic decisions – we can only have what the global economy will allow;

* sets workers against one another, competing for lower ¦ wages in order to get work;

* sees law and order as an end in itself no matter whai injustice it maintains;

* believes in the goodwill of those with money and/or power, and hence, is non-interventionist;

* sees justice as a matter of treating everyone equally, no matter what their wealth, resources or power; and

* sees the basic human right as being the right to make a profit without interference. Profit is the proper aim of business. This has led to the "greed is good" attitude.

On this view, people begin equally and end up unequal in wealth, income, status and power because of their own effort or lack of effort. Life is about money and material goods and everyone should grab what they can.

Few business people live and act consistently with this philosophy. Most businesses seek help for themselves through tariffs, subsidies, tax concessions, etc. It is an ideology to justify what they d0 to workers and consumers, and what they demand of other countries (e.g. through the IMF or the World Bank).

There is a second view of social justice. This view sees things in terms of community, non-materialism and cooperation, and recognises structural injustice. It:

* recognises that people begin life unequally in that while .all of us are equally human, some people have advantages of wealth, abilities and health, while others have disadvantages;

* sees the fundamental human right as the right to live with dignity because one is human;

* measures success in terms of quality of life and relationship;

* sees people as being interdependent;

* sees production as the means of meeting human material need, rather than making profit;

* sees cooperation as the proper form of relationship between people;

* knows that the "free market" does not exist, and that people's effort has very little to do with what people earn or how much wealth or power they enjoy;

* recognises that money, property, status and power are often the outcome of advantages of birth, education, privileged opportunities, etc. rather than the reward for effort;

* sees the aim of human community as that in which everyone's basic needs are met, including the right to contribute to society – i.e. to work;

* defines justice as the more equal sharing of money and power and more equal access to better quality of life offered by the human community and the planet, not only by industry;

* sees it as the government's responsibility to take action which increases justice – i.e. which encourages redistribution of wealth in favour of those who have least;

* defines it as immoral that some people or nations live in luxury while elsewhere people starve;

* sees working conditions and wages as a matter of communal responsibility among workers;

* sees good order as the result of justice;

* recognises that this concept of social justice can only be achieved by taking sides with those in our society who have least – least money, least resources, least power;

* recognises that people with money and/or power usually are more interested in protecting these than injustice for everyone, and that governments therefore have to intervene; and

* recognises that people have a range of material and nonmaterial needs which must be satisfied.

The first view refuses to recognise that some workers are particularly vulnerable to injustice. In Australia, it is women, indigenous people and migrant workers who are least well organised to negotiate with employers, and who have least resources.

Discussion 1:

Do these two different concepts of social justice occur in your country, perhaps with some modification? What groups in your country support each view?

It is fairly clear that one view favours the interests of the wealthy, the other of the poor. But both are called justice. How do the churches justify taking one view rather than another?

Discussion 2:

What is the attitude of your church to workers and unions? What religious ideas do they use to support that attitude? What are some of the key Bible passages they use to support their attitude?

4. Exegetical Suspicion

What does the Bible say? How has the Bible been used against workers, and does it say things which support workers in

their cry for justice? How do we decide which way of using the Bible is more faithful to God? I intend to look at only some examples of the material, not to do a whole survey of scripture.

What parts of the Bible are claimed to support employers against workers? Some examples are: Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22-4:1 and 1 Timothy 6:1-2.

Many Christians think that they can substitute "workers" or "employees" for "slaves" in these passages and "employers" for "masters." They think that they can use the Bible as a "blueprint" (building plan) and apply it directly and literally to situations today.

When the passages are interpreted in this way, they encourage workers to be obedient, respectful, putting the interests of the company they work for above their own needs and concerns. Often "respect" is assumed by Christians to mean an attitude which does not question what the employer does – it is assumed to be respect for the employer as employer, not simply as a human being. "Respect" is assumed to be the attitude of an inferior person to a superior person – an aspect of obedience, rather than an attitude between equals who cooperate together and learn from one another.

Such interpretations go on to take very seriously the idea that work is not simply for the employer, but for the Lord Jesus Christ. They sanctify work – i.e. make it appear sacred. "Work" is considered a universal good – good in its essence, rather than good because of what it produces or bad because of what it produces. You are not simply working for Holden or Nissan or Hyundai, making cars... you are working for God! You are not simply sewing garments in a sweat shop – you are working for God! You are not simply working for an earthly employer, you are working for God, which means you should treat your employer the way you would treat God (your employer, in this interpretation, represents God, or worse still, supplants God – e.g. when business people claim they create wealth).

This sort of attitude is used as a weapon when industries are opposed because they pollute or destroy the environment, produce products harmful to people, or manufacture weapons. "Work" is elevated above all these problems as something always good and which always deserves support. This might appear to be a way of supporting workers – but workers need life, not simply jobs to provide money today so they can die a lingering death from weapons or pollution next week or next year.

These passages are also used against workers by focusing on the call to work hard, to put your whole heart into your work. In Australia at the moment, we have a company, IOOF, which is running advertisements on TV. The ads compare life to a treadmill, where you have (to keep walking simply to stay upright in one place and have to make a big effort to move ahead. Treadmills were used in workhouses for the poor in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as punishments for convicts in the early days of Australia.

They talk about "reward for effort" and how it is the people who make the most effort who will get ahead in the 1990s. The ads are entirely secular, but they have this attitude that hard work is sacred, good beyond all doubt or question, and that we must sacrifice our lives to it.

These passages also say that good workers will be rewarded by God in heaven. It is no wonder that Marx described religion as the opium of the people! There are at least two ways this is used against workers. The first is the implication that if they do not work hard on earth, God will punish them. The second is that it does not matter too much what happens to them on earth, because heaven will be so wonderful!

The call to masters to treat slaves well would seem to be on the side of the workers. But often it is forgotten. The idea that employers should put the interests of workers above their own interests and the desire for profit for the owner or shareholders is

seen as unrealistic. In Australia, for example, there are very few companies which offer workers a share in the profits. But perhaps more dangerous, because it is harder to confront, is that employers sometimes interpret this passage as a call to paternalism – they should look after workers by deciding what is good for them. This paternalism is very common among employers, who often accuse unions of understanding the workers' needs less well than the employer does. The problem is that employers think they can care for workers without listening to them or negotiating with them; or perhaps they negotiate but they do not provide adequate information. Care becomes an excuse for oppression.

The passage from Timothy goes further. It claims that what is at stake in worker obedience is the credibility of the gospel. It suggests that if workers do not have an attitude of unquestioning obedience to their masters, the gospel and Christianity will suffer. Workers cannot win. If their employer is an unbeliever, they should be totally respectful so the employer will be impressed by Christian workers. If the employer is Christian, workers should be respectful and compliant because they should not cause trouble for their brother or sister in Christ.

In Australia, many employers seem to assume these attitudes that I have outlined. Most would not refer to scripture, but the Judeo-Christian tradition has nevertheless helped to mould the attitudes of their class. Too often, in Australia, the church has used this sort of interpretation to support the interests of employers and to provide a religious backing for injustice. Many Christian business people in Australia would quote these passages to justify their anti-union stand, and many Christian workers would claim these passages as reasons for not belonging to unions – they use these passages against themselves.

All of this is very disturbing. If you see each and every verse of scripture as the divinely inspired work of God, then it all seems very clear and simple. If every part of the Bible provides universal, general truths and principles which we are to obey, then workers are in trouble.

Discussion 3:

What criticisms would you make of this interpretation of Ephesians 6:5-9, either of the content or the method?

The problem comes because the verses are taken out of context, both theological and historical, because simplistic parallels are drawn, and because law is substituted for grace.

If we are to interpret correctly any part of scripture, we must first get straight what is the essence of the faith. In the Reformed tradition, it is clearly salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. When we read the later chapters of the letter to the Ephesians, we must set the teaching in the context of the earlier chapters in which the writer sets out the essence of the gospel. If we are going to quote verses, then we had better begin with Ephesians 2:1-10, one of the texts which conservative Christians see as containing the essence of the gospel.

This passage reminds us that humans exist in a state of sin. All human beings let their own needs and wants rule them. All human beings live by their own ideas. Employers are human beings and, therefore, cannot be assumed to be more God-like than employees. Employers, as well as employees, must join with the author of this letter in saying "we were as much under God's anger as the rest of the world." What employers do may be evil, destructive and unacceptable to God. It is likely to be ruled by what they want as selfish individuals, not by what is in the interests of other people or justice. This is not ideological bias – it is acceptance of the human condition of sinfulness, which leads not only to individual sin, but to corporate sin. How can institutions be less sinful than the people who run them?

This part of Ephesians goes on to point out that we are saved by the work of Jesus Christ as an expression of the grace of God. Neither employers nor employees earn forgiveness. Workers are not forgiven if they are obedient and left unforgiven if they challenge

their employers. We are all saved by faith in Jesus Christ, not by our work or our actions.

It also reminds us that life comes from God, not from industry, or the economy, or employers, or companies. "We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it."

If we take the gospel seriously in this passage, then we must take seriously the suggestion that the work of Christ involves a radical reorientation of human life – it cannot be used to support the status quo.

But while the move from Ephesians 6 to Ephesians 2 saves us from some legalism and reminds us of certain dimensions of the gospel, it is still not a good enough methodology. It is still reliance on one passage, one small group of verses taken out of context.

If we were to deal with the issue adequately, we would need to read the full text of Ephesians and to reflect on each of these two passages in the light of the basic message of the letter. We do not have time to do that, so let me briefly summarise the theme of the letter to the Ephesians. (I have taken these themes from commentaries on Ephesians I prepared for a daily Bible reading publication in Australia called "With Love to the World," 1988.)

The document known as the letter to the Ephesians is fundamentally about the recreation of the universe through a change in race relationships. The work of Christ was to bridge the unbridgeable gap between Jew and Gentile, to end the time when some people were perceived as close to God and others as separated from God. None of the modem day barriers between races, whether skin colour, culture, language, place of origin, political system or economic fortune can be more basic than the religious gulf which once separated Jew and Gentile, and the letter is intended to help the church recognise that Christ brings peace between the races.

The vision presented is of people being brought together into one organic whole, into one person, with Christ as the head and an all-embracing church as body. The organism grows and matures as its members grow in understanding and as their lives become what God always meant them to be.

There is an excitement and enthusiasm which bubbles out in long sentences which pile up image on image, idea on idea. The writer is absolutely convinced of God's grace. God's love, God's mercy, God's power, all of which reach out to encompass all humankind, all races and everything in creation. The work of Christ has been planned since the beginning of time, and its effects will continue to the end of time, and beyond.

The ethical teaching comes out of the writer's conviction that what Christ offers is newness of life made possible because in some way our lives are caught up in the life of Christ and gain the benefit of his power over all evil forces. The essential challenge is to live lives shaped by the unity which we have in Christ and by the enlightenment which we receive from the Spirit.

To recognise these themes we really need to read the whole of Ephesians. Let me mention some of the verses which would help us recognise these key ideas – ideas which are far more radical than their own author seems to have realised, in their implications for practical questions of human life, e.g. work.

Ephesians 1:9-10

The purpose of the work of Christ is the unity of the universe. This raises the question: how can the whole universe be considered to be united by Christ, while

* women workers are exploited?

* there is fragmentation of workers groups and competition against each other?

* employers become rich by keeping workers poor?

* workers of particular language groups are disadvantaged compared to others?

* employers are able to do what is right in their own eyes, whatever the law lets them get away with?

Ephesians 1:18

God gives to people God's wealth, glory and resources of power.

Does this apply only to employers who believe, or also to the poorest women workers? How can poor women workers believe these words if they are deprived of experiences of power over their own lives, i.e. their working lives? What does it mean to say God shares God's resources with migrant women workers if they have no English-speaking unions to support them and ensure they know their rights? We cannot avoid this implication by saying the passage applies only to believers – in Australia, many migrant women workers are believers. And if the whole of heaven and earth is being brought into unity, can this be achieved if workers who are not Christian, as in the case in many parts of Asia, are left by God without resources?

Ephesians 2

As I have pointed out above, the theme of this chapter appears to be radical transformation of human lives and the power structures. The inadequate working conditions of the workers who have least resources must be considered part of the evil to be transformed.

Ephesians 3:18

We are reminded of the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God. Such all-embracing love is inconsistent with competition, with women workers being left to the mercy of their employers, and with the situation where well-organised English speaking workers prosper while the non-English speakers work for low wages.

Ephesians 4:22

Again we have the idea of transformation – the need for a radical remaking of the human person and radical change in the way people live. What does it mean for employers to lay aside "the old human nature which, deluded by lust, is sinking towards death?" Surely part of their delusion is that they are more deserving of good pay than workers, and their basic attitude of materialism.

Ephesians 5:6

Readers are called to live as people who have given up darkness for light. What does this mean for employers – to give up power over workers, for the sake of a community in which workers unite and empower one another?

What I am getting at is that to work out the implications of the gospel in Ephesians, we need to look at the whole letter and discover the vision and challenge of the kingdom, the new reality, the transformed world, and then work out how that vision may have meaning for today.

Discussion 4:

If we take the basic themes of Ephesians as I have outlined them, how would you rewrite Ephesians 6:5-9 to be faithful to those themes and address the situation of workers and employers today?

Discussion 5:

What are some of the stories of worker struggles for justice which are consistent with these basic themes of Ephesians?

When we look at all this, it is clear that we cannot simply take the verses about slaves and masters and apply them to employer-employee relationships. So many of the values inherent in the initial interpretation we gave of the passage are challenged by the overall teaching of Ephesians, that such an interpretation does violence to the purpose of Ephesians. Obviously the writer was trying to work within the social and political realities of his day – he was as radical as he dared to be. He lived in a world where slaves and ordinary workers had no power to bring about social and political change. He applied the gospel to reality as he experienced it and understood it. But today we know that radical social and political change is possible. Slavery has been abolished (officially at least). Workers are not slaves, and what is possible in the modern world is different from what was possible in his day. We must pick up the essence of this teaching – the idea of the cosmic Christ transforming all relationships, even the most difficult to change. Christ breaks down the barriers. We are not to be confined by the possibilities of the society and economy of 1900 years ago, but freed by the vision of the universe which Christ makes whole. God is at work in the world, transforming it, and we are called to share in the process of transformation, not to stand against it.

The vision from Ephesians seems to me to challenge a number of relevant ideas:

* It challenges the view that the status quo of society, economics and politics can or should remain unchanged. As long as this world lasts, and the Kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness, all systems will continue to need to be challenged – Christ continually seeks to renew and heal this world.

* It challenges the view that either employers or employees can live unchanged. However, the most vulnerable workers are usually very hard-working – exploited by employers because they are desperate for a job, or lack the language skills which would enable them to know their rights, or because they do not have the time or energy to organise. For example, in Australia, in industries where the unions are weak, workers are often paid less than the award wages. In these cases, it is clearly the employer who needs to change. Later in this study, I will mention some of the behaviour for which unions must be challenged.

* It challenges the idea of the superiority of one group of people over another – the idea is mutual respect. Employers cannot be either patronising or oppressive. They must work with their employees, learning from them.

Women making pottery (Japan)

* It challenges the idea of competition – surely much of what is said about the church and the need to be one organic whole is also true of humankind. We need one another, we are interdependent,

we cannot truly live if we insist on competition and reward which depends on one's power.

* It challenges the view that some people are entitled to live well, indulging their sensuousness in whatever form – their sexual appetites, their desire for food or drink or material goods or extravagant housing or travel – while others barely live at all.

* It challenges the power of all evil systems in the world – social, political, economic – because they all need to be remade by Christ.

* It challenges the view that any person or company is beyond question – if we can be bold in approaching God (3:12-13), surely there is no person or entity on earth whom we cannot approach boldly?

All this evidence suggests that the second view of social justice is closer to the gospel than the first view, and that it is appropriate for the churches to support workers who cooperate with one another in ensuring that the evil and exploitative economic systems of our various countries, and the global economy which inter-connects them, are challenged by unions which have some power to bring about change. The test is the dignity of all people before God – the right of all to be part of the one universe and to share in the life God gives.

However, we cannot stop at Ephesians. In order to check out these conclusions, we need to turn to the broader context of scripture, and to look at the question of workers rights and industrial relations in terms of the fundamental themes of scripture. Let me sketch a few of these briefly.

The God of the Old Testament is first and foremost the God who rescued the Israelites from slavery in a foreign land. The law in the Old Testament comes out of belief in this God, the God who fought the gods of Egypt who condoned slavery and defeated them.

The ten commandments must be understood in the context of the God of the Exodus. They are not about personal morality, but about how to live as a community in which people do not enslave one another.

The ten commandments are part of a much larger body of law, a large part of which is devoted to ensuring fair distribution of land and to mechanisms which ensure that even when people lose their land (their means of production), it is returned to a later generation of their family. The law attempts to prevent what we today call "the poverty cycle." It is concerned with just outcomes of the economic system.

Throughout the Old Testament there is the view that the essential thing for human life is community. Shalom, or peace, is wholeness of community in which the blessings of life are shared by everyone. Every week, around the world, millions of Anglicans and Catholics say or sing the song of Mary, the Magnificat, from Luke 1:46-56. This song summarises for Luke the significance of Christ. Included in it are the lines: "God has shown the power of his arm, he has routed the proud of heart. He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent empty away."

It is part of Luke's claim that the purpose of the life and death of Jesus Christ is the reversal of the world order – a radical new community has been begun by Christ, in which people function in community and ensure that everyone's needs are met.

5. A New Hermeneutic

When I think about the proposals in NSW in the light of all this, and think about the low wages and poor working conditions of many women, especially migrant women, I find I must oppose what the government is proposing.

* They think equity is about treating employers and employees the same. They do not acknowledge the different levels of power, the different opportunities or choices. They do not recognise that some workers are less able to negotiate than others. Their idea of "equity" or "equality" is a means of exploitation.

* They want to reduce the capacity of workers to cooperate with one another in negotiating wages. The new system would fragment workers, setting workers of one enterprise against workers in another. Workers would compete for the lowest wages.

* Enterprise bargaining, as it has been proposed for NSW, ignores any concept of work value, or equal wages for equal work. Badly managed enterprises will be able to claim lack of capacity to pay, instead of having to improve their management.

* The scheme is based on the idea that workers are simply another factor in production, not human beings with needs and rights. There is no concept in the proposal of wage justice, or just working conditions.

* The system is based on the needs of the market, not what human beings need for life.

* The only vision underlying the proposal is cheap production and high profit.

* The scheme is supposedly based on the right to work. The premier claims that the right to work is more important than the right to strike. But this confuses means and ends. The real right which must be protected is the right of human beings to live – to have an adequate standard of living and to work under reasonable conditions (hours, leisure, holidays, as well as the conditions at the work place).

The-rights for workers which are found in the international instruments on human rights seem much more consistent with the vision. These rights include:

the right to equal pay for equal work;

the right to just and favourable remuneration for work;

the right to an "existence worthy of human dignity;"

the right to a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing;

the right to a full and productive employment under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms of the individual;

the right to rest, leisure and the reasonable limitation of working hours, and periodic holidays with pay;

the right to form trade unions;

the right of trade unions to function with only the minimal restrictions necessary for national security and public order;

the right to strike;

the right to an adequate standard of living for oneself and one's family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and the continuous improvement in living conditions;

the right to join trade unions for the protection of one's interests; and

the right to effective protection, through the law, against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Implicit in these human rights instruments is the view that people do not begin life with equal advantage, and that the state parties to the covenants must take action to ensure a just outcome - that everyone's basic human needs are met. They recognise the dignity of the human being. The role of law and of government is to ensure that human dignity is respected and human needs are met. It is recognised that trade unions have a significant role in bringing this about, and that they need some specific rights in order for this to be possible.

6. Looking Again at Reality and Reflecting on Action

However, this is not all against employers and in favour of unions and workers. In Australia, some unions have not respected human rights and the needs of all workers, but have selfishly and immorally pursued the interests of only their own workers. The worst example is the Painters and Dockers Union which has been implicated in a number of bashings and murders. It became more concerned about power than about human rights. Other unions have been accused of seeking increased wages for some workers at the expense of increased unemployment for other workers – a lack of solidarity between workers and the unemployed.

Several powerful unions have pushed for increases in wages for their own members at the expense of members of less powerful unions who were less well paid. Some unions have been more concerned about the male than the female workers within their industries so that women continue to be paid low wages. Some unions have neglected the needs of migrant workers. Some unions indulge in strikes before they have seriously tried the legal means of settling disputes. Some unions imagine disputes which do not really exist. The gospel challenges the vision of such unions as much as it challenges employers.

Human rights cannot be won by ignoring the human rights of other people. Yet some unions in Australia have been guilty of doing so. For example, tram drivers in Melbourne in 1990 immobilised trams on the streets, welded bars across the tracks and so on, creating danger for other people trying to go to work. They were entitled to strike, but not to wreak havoc on other workers. Two days before I was due to fly to this workshop, I expected delays because the men who refuel the planes had decided to go on strike because of a change in the refuelling system in Perth. The Perth refuellers did not strike – it was the refuellers everywhere else, in spite of assurances from the companies that the system would not be introduced elsewhere. Such actions bring the unions into disrepute.

It is, of course, sometimes difficult to decide what is just and what is not. I suggest that workers struggling for the most basic essentials for survival have the right to use more drastic means of winning their fight than those who already live, by world standards, in relative affluence. The test of unions is whether their actions express solidarity with those who have least.

We are all called to be transformed by Christ, and one's entitlement to look after one's own rights is inversely proportional to one's current level of affluence – the poor are not called to give up survival, but the rich are called to give up their luxury for the sake of all people. That needs to be understood both by employers and by the most affluent workers.

In Australia, for example, unions tend to support the idea of increasing affluence and consumption provided that their members get a share. They often seem to avoid the basic questions about the materialism and consumerism of western society, questions about how the industrialised nations exploit other nations through transnational corporations and financial institutions, and questions about the damage which is done to the environment by our levels of consumption and our unnecessary industry. While some attempt is made by the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) to offer support to unions in other countries, this work seems to be fairly minimal – the unions want their members to live better, they think very little about the needs of workers elsewhere in the world who barely live at all.

In short, I am suggesting that the biblical tradition about salvation supports the human rights of workers listed in the international human rights instruments, and that it is appropriate that Christians, WSCF, the churches, support struggles which will improve the human rights of workers. But we should not assume all union actions everywhere in the world are intended to improve the situation of those whose human rights are most abused. Neither should we assume that all women who talk about justice are really concerned about such people. We need to use our understanding

of social justice and human rights and the gospel to ensure that the struggles in which we become involved are struggles on behalf of the poorest of the poor.

This brings us back to the point in our circle where we began. When we look at the concerns of the Social Justice for Migrant Workers Coalition, they appear to have been right to support the needs of women to be protected by the trade unions. If enterprise agreements lead to women's wages remaining low or decreasing further, then the churches will have to challenge the government very strongly and encourage the whole union movement to do so. Christ died to end the divisions between people, not to encourage divisions to exist.

I would like to share with you an experience I had in Korea last year at the Bible study workshop of the Asian Women's Resource Centre. One day we went on an exposure trip which included meeting women from a Korean organisation which is concerned about justice for women in the church. One of the women from that organisation introduced herself as a business woman and told us she had visited Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh recently to look for new sites for her factories. The reason was that wages were now too high in Korea because of unions. There are no unions in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, and they are not allowed by law. The woman claimed that her factories would help the development of those countries. It would benefit the women! She seemed quite shocked when some of our women challenged her. She claimed she was not abusing human rights of workers – she was helping them. She found it impossible to understand when women from those countries, and other countries, tried to tell her that if she benefited from the actions of governments who have deprived workers of human rights, then she shares the guilt and brings destruction, not development, to the people she employs.

Those of us at this workshop are probably among the privileged of the societies from which we come. We have had access to tertiary education. In all countries, we are part of an elite – in

some countries part of a very small and exclusive elite. As the writer of the Ephesians reminds us, we need Christ, not only to forgive, but to enlighten us so that we can see and understand the world in a new way – a way which genuinely promotes healing and wholeness and life for our sisters who are most vulnerable, most exploited, most struggling to survive, and not dimply a way which seems right from our privileged position.

Discussion 6:

What role do unions play in your country? Do they act in ways consistent with the vision in Ephesians? Are there unions which need to be challenged to discover the vision? (These questions are best discussed by telling stories of actual happenings, rather than discussing them theoretically – i.e. what is the reality?)