by Robert McCreanor
Much public outrage has been generated by reports of inhumane working and housing conditions for employees at the Foxconn production site in China. The revelation that our iPhones, iPods, and various other wonder gadgets may be assembled by Chinese men, women and children who toil in dangerous workplaces, sustain crippling physical injuries and receive appalling low wages for long hours of labor – all while living in overcrowded and unsafe company housing – shocked the conscience of some and spurred loud calls for corporate employer accountability.
The sufferings of these low wage workers can be compared to a stage of industrial and economic development that occurred in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But do we believe that such conditions and abuses no longer exist in this country? How many of us realize that migrant workers live in overcrowded, unsafe housing and are subjected to dangerous work conditions and wage theft by unscrupulous employers right here in Brooklyn and Queens? And what are we doing to hold bad landlords and exploitive employers accountable, not just in Beijing, but right here in Corona, Sunset Park and Woodside?
At the Diocese’s Catholic Migration Office, we regularly see immigrants whose living and working conditions bear a not insignificant resemblance to those associated with the tenements and sweatshops described by Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair in their muckraking writings of the late 1800s.
In his famous work of photojournalism, “How the Other Half Lives,” Riis exposed the plight of immigrants inhabiting the tenement slums of New York City. It makes me think about our legal consultation clinics where I interview one tenant after another who tells of living in a basement, an attic, a space above a garage, a room within a room rented in a private house. These overcrowded conditions predominate especially in recent immigrant communities like Corona, where there is a catastrophic lack of legal, multi-family housing.
The Community Service Society reports that immigrants in New York City are far more likely to live in overcrowded housing and to suffer from serious housing maintenance code violations than the average New Yorker.
Low-wage immigrant workers call and visit the Catholic Migration Office every day to report that their employers did not pay them after weeks of physical labor, that they were paid substantially below the legal minimum wage and no overtime, and that they have been injured while working in unsafe conditions.
Recently, our office filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of three immigrant women who worked in an illegal basement factory in Woodside, making piñatas and other party goods for more than 12 hours a day and receiving only $40 compensation. They were locked in the basement, threatened with harm by their employer, denied access to a restroom, and subjected to harmful chemicals in the absence of any ventilation. This modern day workplace in Queens might be a familiar sight to the immigrants who toiled under horrid conditions in this country more than 100 years ago. Upton Sinclair wrote about them in his turn-of-the-20th century book, “The Jungle.”
As Catholics, we are especially called to care about such violations of human dignity. From the Gospel passages in which Jesus speaks of a “just wage” owed to workers to successive papal teachings on labor, the vast corpus of Catholic social justice teaching consistently emphasizes the importance of respect and care for low wage workers.
Pope Leo XIII wrote that “(i)t is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies.” (Rerum Novarum)
His successors, Pius XI, John XXIII and John Paul II, all reiterated this fundamental principle of fair treatment for workers and criticized modern day abuses of the working poor. Similarly, the Church’s teachings on the right of all peoples to safe and affordable housing has been repeatedly made clear. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops defines the fundamental right to life as inclusive of the right to shelter.
In the Diocese of Brooklyn, the Church carries out these principals through the work of its various ministries including the housing and employment legal services of the Catholic Migration Office. These programs reflect our efforts to put faith into action and our work involves not only the provision of services to those who are exploited but the speaking out against such abuses so as to make others aware that the plight of migrants exists not only in the developing world but sometimes in our own community.
Robert McCreanor is director of legal services for Catholic Charities.