ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
You'd think these may not be the best of times for Lara Granich, the director of a nonprofit that serves as a watchdog against lax and abusive labor practices.
Granich's job description — community organizer — might also be problematic for those who venerate the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.
But all in all, the head of Missouri Jobs with Justice says, "it's really kind of an exciting time for what we do."
To understand that function, it helps to look at where the organization is situated in the hierarchy of American employment.
At the top end of the spectrum stands the tarnished, but unbowed, titans of industry and Masters of the Wall Street Universe.
On the opposite end are the lower- and middle-class wage earners that do the country's heavy listing.
It's those employees that the Jobs with Justice coalitions represent in 40 cities across the country.
Worker advocates, JwJ coalitions align with faith-based, community and labor organizations on behalf of fair wages, employment conditions and other issues.
(Full disclosure: Jobs with Justice supports the efforts of the guild representing Post-Dispatch employees).
At JwJ, an economy that has stripped away 130,000 jobs locally and 15 million nationwide is seen as an educational and motivational tool.
The working class, Granich has found, is justifiably outraged by the yawning gap between working class wages and executive compensation.
According to the Institute of Policy Studies, the ratio between CEO pay and that of the average U.S. worker is 319-to-14; the discrepancy balloons to 714-to-15 for minimum-wage employees.
"When we talk to working people we find out that, yes, they are desperate," Granich explained. "But they are a lot clearer that if they don't stand up for themselves, no one else will."
On Thursday night, the coalition marked the 10th anniversary of the national Jobs with Justice movement's presence in St. Louis and Missouri. Over dinner and in speeches, the coalition commemorated battles won:
The 2005 sit-in and hunger strike that ended with Washington University granting fair wage concessions to custodians and other non-professional employees tops the list of accomplishments.
And battles ongoing: The push for health care reform.
As Jobs with Justice moves into its second decade in St. Louis and across Missouri, Granich acknowledges that dealing with the decline of manufacturing, retail and service jobs — the very foundation of the coalition's advocacy efforts — will be a major challenge.
Despite "losing the things they've built over the years," she said, St. Louis remains, at heart, a blue-collar community with a blue-collar work ethic.
Granich sees those deeply ingrained sensibilities transcending the workplace as the area's blue-collar job force moves from heavy industry to the emerging environmentally sustainable (green) sector.
"Even people who don't belong to a union have working-class people in their families or in their neighborhoods," she said. "And that's a real asset."
A product of north St. Louis county, Granich comes from working class, activist and labor roots.
Her grandfather was a member of the Communications Workers of America, an aunt was played a high-profile role in St. Louis' social justice movement and her mother spearheaded an unsuccessful bid to organize the area's parochial teachers.
"It was part of how I grew up," she explained.
Granich picked up the ball following graduation from Minnesota's Macalester College when, as an usher at Powell Symphony Hall and the Gateway Arch, she joined the Stagehands Union upon her return to St. Louis.
She served as a volunteer when nonprofit, nonpartisan Jobs with Justice organized in St. Louis in 1999 and started drawing a paycheck from the organization in 2001.
Firmly ensconced in the job and the cause, Granich cheerfully dismisses the recent disdain directed at people in her line of work.
"We have a community organizer in the White House," Granich points out.
Beck, Limbaugh and Palin notwithstanding, Granich is pretty proud of that.
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