LOSS OF THE SACRED LINK BETWEEN WORK, WORTH

Iwent to the Faith and Labor Picnic on Monday afternoon. I’m not sure which was more underrepresented — faith or labor.

A few hundred people attended the annual event, a fundraiser for the Workers Interfaith Network.

But in a community built on faith and labor, and on a warm, sunny holiday, there should have been more.

Here in the age of the “as-needed nonemployee,” we seem to have lost the sacred connection between work and worth.

“Not paying fairly, not giving a job because you are only looking at how to make a profit — that goes against God,” Pope Francis said in 2013.

The pro-labor pope is in for a rude awakening when he visits America later this month.

America’s faithand-labor movement, which brought us such advancements in social justice as child labor laws, the eight-hour workday and the minimum wage, has been in decline for years.

Today, the most (and maybe only) popular labor union in America, the NFL Players Association, represents millionaires who work for billionaires.

Which of the following big labor cases have you heard more about this year?

National Football League Management Council v. National Football League Players Association, or Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association?

The first case could have kept quarterback Tom Brady out of four whole games this season.

The second, scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court this term, could force millions of public employees into a right-to-work model.

Assuming there are any public employees left to force.

which entity pays the most contract workers $12 an hour or less? McDonald’s, Walmart or government?

Believe it or not, federal, state and local governments actually pay more contract workers than those two notoriously lowwage corporations combined.

That’s why President Barack Obama signed an executive order Monday that requires federal contractors to provide up to seven days of paid sick leave a year.

Maybe we should call it Contract Labor Day.

The number of contract laborers is only going to grow, as politicians and investors work to replace middle-class government employees with lowerwage “non-employee” workers.

Tennessee Gov. Bill (as in Billionaire) Haslam has plans to outsource the management of stateowned hospitals, universities, prisons, parks and even National Guard facilities.

Haslam, the richest elected official in America, already has given (without bid) a multimillion-dollar state contract to a Chicago firm to manage state office buildings.

As it turns out, before he ran for governor, Haslam held an investment interest in the firm, Jones Lang Lasalle. He might still, but his assets are now in a blind trust so he really can’t say for sure.

You don’t have to be blind or have a trust fund to see how this works.

Tax dollars that used to go to employees — aka your friends and neighbors — are going to shareholders and other investors, most of them in other states or countries.

“Non-employee” contract workers have less job stability, lower wages, few if any benefits and less money to spend.

That hurts local merchants — not to mention local taxpayers, who end up paying the cost in lower property values, lower tax receipts, higher welfare costs, and so on.

In California, for example, a typical contracted school cafeteria worker collects $1,743 annually in public assistance because of low wages.

Privatizing government jobs “contributes to the decline of the middle class and the rise in povertylevel jobs, thereby exacerbating growing economic inequality,” according to a recent report by In the Public Interest.

Middle-class manufacturing jobs were outsourced to countries with cheaper labor costs and fewer labor laws. Now, middle-class government jobs are being outsourced to companies with cheaper labor costs and fewer labor rules.

“We’re losing more than good jobs and good incomes,” said Zachary Ferguson, board president of the Workers Interfaith Network and a former Methodist missionary.

Ferguson grew up in a middle-class home in Virginia. His father was a state trooper and his mother was a school principal.

“I grew up being taught that work is a form of worship, an act of praising God, sacred,” said Ferguson, who was at Monday’s picnic. “If we just see work as a cost that cuts into profit, we diminish the sanctity of work and the value of the worker.”

And we only see the cost of labor, not the value of labor.