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A New Alliance between Religion and Labor? The 2002 Graphic Communications International Union–San Diego Union-Tribune Newspaper Contract Negotiation

Despite a largely successful, fifteen-year effort to get rid of its labor unions, in July 2002 the San Diego (California) Union-Tribune newspaper signed a contract with its pressroom workers that maintained the integrity of the Graphic Communications International Union as the legal bargaining agent. What was unusual was not simply that the company signed a contract after years of negotiations essentially designed to break the union, but that the contract was negotiated by a team of outsiders: three leaders of the San Diego religious community drawn from the executive board of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, the Secretary-Treasurer of the San Diego–Imperial Counties Labor Council, and a prominent local businessman. The pressroom workers had dropped out of the negotiating and authorized these others to bargain on their behalf. With labor's decline in the USA, religion has become one of the few institutions with the legitimacy to raise social justice issues and employ a morality-based discourse. The modest resurgence of the religion–labor alliance and revival of a discourse of social justice on behalf of labor may be a significant development in contemporary labor relations and in the orientation of faith-based social action groups. This paper explores these issues through a compelling case study.