CONTACT: Brian O'Shaughnessy, Director, New York State Labor-Religion Coalition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (518) 213-6000, Ext. 6294 or Cell (518) 209-2483

40-HOUR FAST TO CALL FOR SACRIFICE AND LEGISLATIVE CHANGE

ALBANY, N.Y. March 5, 2002 - The New York State Labor-Religion Coalition will lead hundreds of New Yorkers in 40 hours of fasting from all solid food to focus attention on the plight of thousands of low-wage workers. Local events will take place across the state in nine different locations.

Coalition Co-Chairs, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard and Thomas Y. Hobart, Jr., New York State United Teachers' President, will discuss this year's 40-hours of fasting and "hungering for justice," at a news conference to be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, 85 Chestnut Street, Albany. Workers will testify about their struggles to support their families.

Hobart and Bishop Hubbard will call on the governor and state Legislature to increase the state's minimum wage and provide farm workers with basic protections under the state's labor laws. Currently, farm workers are excluded from a legal day of rest each week and the right to overtime pay.

Hobart said passage of an increase to New York's current $5.15 minimum wage is long overdue. "No state should sanction a wage that practically guarantees a poverty existence," Hobart said. He noted that minimum wage jobs are not just held by teenagers looking for additional spending money. "We know from studies after the last minimum wage raise that forty percent of minimum wage workers are the sole breadwinners in their families," he said. "It's very wrong that someone working full-time needs to rely on food pantries and food stamps to feed their family."

Hubbard made a plea to state leaders to extend state labor law protections to farm workers. He noted that despite progress in recent years -- farm workers won the right to drinking water in the fields, and access to toilets and sanitation - the state still must do more. "The people whose sweat and back-breaking work puts food on all our tables should be treated with dignity," Hubbard said. "It is unconscionable that a state as great as ours does not give farm workers a legal right to a day off from work, and the right to overtime pay."

Brian O'Shaughnessy, coordinator of the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition, said the 40-hour time period for prayer, reflection, sacrifice and action is rooted in both religious and labor traditions. For Christians, the 40 days of Lent are meant to be a time for prayer, reflection and transformation. The season also marks Jesus' 40 days of fasting and the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years. The 40-hour week, which created the "weekend," for most workers, was won after years of organizing and struggle by the labor movement.

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