An Update
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Hope in Black and White
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Several weeks ago I shared with you how deeply I believe in the power of letters. There is nothing quite like a well thought-out letter, I wrote. But in our era of scanners, I found that the responses to my Washington-bound letter had little to do with my actual questions or point of view.
I shared that I’d written a letter, not an e-mail, not a twitter feed, but an actual letter, sealed with a stamp, to the Secretary of Labor in Washington DC. My concern was the welfare of workers who clean the floors of grocery stores in the wee hours of the night. They do not work for generous corporations such as Target for whom community relations actually do matter. Instead, they work for holding companies that makes a deal with corporations to clean stores when the world is asleep. Nobody knows the names of these companies who care not all that much about the welfare of their workers. And so Target cleaners aren’t working for Target; Rainbow cleaners aren’t working for Rainbow. What a surprise. I asked her who in the Department of Labor oversees their working conditions, and their attempt to earn a living wage.
Then I said, “I’m still waiting for an answer.” There was a tone in those words. The tone said, “I’ll bet this is another lost cause.”
I was wrong.
Last week I received a letter from the U.S. Department of Labor, E030 Room N3408, 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20210
I opened it. I expected, for a brief moment, to see a computer-generated letter. But that is not what I found. The opening paragraph explained that the Secretary of Labor had forwarded my letter to this office for a response. The letter was hand signed, with real ink, and a real name. She had read my letter with some care.
Some of it, of course, was a bit over my head. She cited the laws the protect workers who want to form a union. She cited laws intended to keep workers safe. She cited labor laws by both name and number.
“You mentioned in your letter corporations such as Target, Cub, WalMart, and Rainbow.” Then she noted that they do have the legal right to outsource some of their labor market.
It was not a one-page letter. It was a two-page letter.
I mentioned in my column about the power of letters that they restore hope in my heart. I am going to write her back, and thank her for taking the time.
I doesn’t mean, of course, that there isn’t work to be done. There were laws protecting the West Virginia miners, and the safety of drilling rigs. I suspect that good-will corporations have no idea how their night-time non-employees are being treated, and that if they did they’d intervene in a helpful, useful, and thoughtful way. At least that’s my hope. If so, we can escape the confines of black and white thinking.
And so . . . here’s the painting in color.
Same Painting in the Colors of Hope
And now?
It’s time to move on to a new round of letters asking for the change, awareness, and compassion