“Labor Day weekend is a time when faith communities and the labor movement celebrate their common bonds of equality, justice, dignity, and fair treatment for all workers.”

Work and the values of labor taught by religion have been tied forever — or at least as long as anyone has known the Bible.

In modern times we see crusading activists — ordained and laypeople — on the front lines of worker movements.

Picture the late Karl Malden, playing a famous Jesuit priest-of-the-piers Rev. John Corridan in On the Waterfront, challenging Marlon Brando’s stevedore character to stand up to corrupt bosses on the docks, a fictional variation on rough reality.

Remember his line? “Christ is in the shape-up” — the line up for men seeing work.

Phil Tom, director for the Department of Labor’s, Center for Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships (President Obama’s variation on the Bush Faith-Based Initiative) sent out his vision of faith and labor just in time for the holiday weekend.

Tom, a Presbyterian clergyman surveys the three Abrahamic faiths, with a Catholic, a Muslim and a Jew all talking about what their traditions teach on about just wages and fair treatment for workers.

Read More: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/09/labor-day-workers-god-faith-justice/1