Worker death camp in the desert

About 20 people representing Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based group describing itself as "a network of people of faith that calls upon our religious values in order to educate, organize and mobilize the religious community in the United States on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits and conditions for workers," showed up at the Las Vegas office of local home builder Pulte Homes Wednesday to deliver a 17-page report.

The document stated the group had discovered a "disturbing pattern of injustice and abuse" among Pulte's subcontractors. Members had visited Pulte work sites and talked to workers there, learning of unsafe working conditions, failure to pay overtime, lack of "affordable health care and benefits," and "wages so low they had to work 60 to 70 hours per week to make ends meet."

Goodness. Anyone unaware of who these "IWJ" folks are -- who funds them and what their agenda is -- might conclude that some group of well-meaning, itinerant preachers touring the Southwest just happened to stumble on a hideous worker death camp reminiscent of the desert slave mine in the 2005 Antonio Banderas remake of "The Legend of Zorro," where this "Pulte Homes" outfit holds construction workers in virtual servitude, paying them below minimum wage and working them till they're too crippled to climb the roofs, at which point they're tossed into some huge funeral pit to moan softly till the desert sun puts them out of their misery.

In fact, the journal Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in September 2005 that, "The disaffiliation of several AFL-CIO unions in 2005 led to several significant problems for IWJ. Over half of IWJ's Seminary Summer students worked with unions that split from the AFL-CIO. The split forced the AFL-CIO to halve its donations to IWJ. The split also significantly impaired the ability of the AFL-CIO's state and central labor bodies to conduct their work. IWJ relied heavily on these bodies for staff and money."

Some of these issues were resolved in late 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported on Dec. 13 of that year, as that month the AFL-CIO signed a partnership agreement with Interfaith Worker Justice which "renewed the AFL-CIO's support for IWJ."

"Let's set the record straight," explains Jackie Petroulakis, spokeswoman for Pulte's Phoenix-based Southwest division. "This is an attack on our company by unions trying to organize some of our subcontractors in Arizona and Nevada. We believe they're a front for the AFL-CIO."

And not a very well-disguised one, at that.

There is -- long has been -- a Religious Left in America, as well as a Religious Right. Do churchmen and churchwomen have a right to speak out on what they see as exploitative working conditions and inadequate wages? Of course. Though such groups might better preserve their public credibility if they admitted, up front, their union funding and intensely partisan agenda.

(Has the IWJ ever protested the treatment of workers -- the inappropriate issuance of loans from their pension funds, say -- by an AFL-CIO affiliated union?)

They also have a right to call in federal authorities if they believe any home builder is paying below minimum wage or violating worker safety laws -- we note this group has not done so, in this case -- or to go into direct competition with Pulte Homes, for that matter, if they believe they can build quality homes and sell them at competitive market prices under the kind of Byzantine workplace rules and punitive financial extractions that could be imposed by a union contract.

That should be easy, if the region's existing home builders are truly not paying workers their "fair share" of home sale proceeds.

Or is the problem that excess worker competition is holding down pay scales? If so, we await the IWJ's endorsement of a slate of candidates in this fall's elections who vow to round up and expel every illegal immigrant currently seeking or holding a construction job that could otherwise be done by a U.S. citizen.

Since that would clearly "improve wages, benefits and conditions for (American) workers," we shouldn't have to wait long. Should we?