Comments on: The Liberal Mormon: Watch for the Union Label

By: The Other Clark

The Other Clark — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:55:25 +0000

In our industrial civilization protection against excessive hours of work and a less than subsistence wage is socially necessary.

I think liberals and conservatives (in the modern sense) can both agree that this is true. The disagreement is how to achieve it. Government mandate or a grassroots, boycott-type effort of those stores and factories that don’t comply?

Mormonism has been inconsistent, I think, on which road to go down. Some instances (such as Right to Work)they’re clearly sided with individual agency. For others, such as alcohol sales, gambling, and SSM, they’ve clearly opted for government compulsion.

The most interesting for me is that a Church magazine would issue a formal stand on something like this. I wonder if “the Brethren” signed off on it, or if the RS was autonomous enough to just do it.

By: The Other Clark

The Other Clark — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:46:53 +0000

My grandfather (then about 12) moved to California in the early 1930′s. His mother wanted to buy him a bike to ease the 2-mile (each way) journey to school, and secured a job as a seamstress. Her life history records she was paid fifty cents per “bundle” of three dozen pants.

I suspect these are the type of situations the N.R.A. and the Relief Society were trying to remedy.

By: Mark Brown

Mark Brown — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:46:09 +0000

One of the sad facts of Utah history is that the church and labor unions got off on the wrong foot and have never really recovered.

It is understandable — many of the miners in Price and Bingham and Park City were Roman Catholic immigrants, and many of the unions took an aggressive anti-Mormon stance — but it is still a shame, and there is no reason for this animosity to persist.

By: queuno

queuno — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:13:26 +0000

My mother’s family was management. The only good union member was a dead union member. My father’s family was labor (Kennecott and the SLFD).

Ah, the mesh of politics.

By: Chris H.

Chris H. — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:55:43 +0000

“Note, please, that it was the principles of fair treatment of workers that the Relief Society endorsed; those principles – safe working conditions, fair pay, decent hours, and not exploiting the desperation of the unemployed – mesh well with the principles of the gospel (the Golden Rule, not “grinding the faces of the poor,” prompt payment of “the wages of him that is hired”). The Relief Society supported those goals and did not hesitate to champion them even when the vehicle for achieving those goals was a governmental rather than ecclesiastical one.”

By: Grant

Grant — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:35:09 +0000

Thanks, Ardis. Considering that my four Utah Mormon Grandparents were strong FDR and New Deal supporters at that time (even if politics later changed at least on one side of the family), it’s not at all surprising that the Relief Society would support such a cause. I don’t think anyone is going to the Telestial Kingdom just for that. (Is that Mormon enough?)