By Bob Hennelly

On this week’s episode of the Moral Monday Radio Labor Hour, we join Rev. Dr. William Barber in New Haven, Connecticut for his Center for Public Theology and Public Policy Conference where attendees are asking, “What are the moral and spiritual issues of the 2024 Presidential Election?”

This two-day event at Yale University is examining some of the most profound moral issues of our time, including the reality of poverty being the fourth-leading cause of death in America — the wealthiest nation on earth. A nation that, continues to spend hundreds of billions on military hardware annually, while a third of its population struggles to make ends meet, and the $7.25 federal minimum wage hasn’t budged since 2009.

Rev. Dr. Barber talks about how, historically, the USA’s 85 million low-wealth and low-wage voters are left out of a political conversation dominated by two corporate-controlled political parties. Rev. Barber explains how the conference will explore the essential role the American labor movement must play in realigning our national priorities away from the scarcity, greed and violence that so often defines our circumstance.

We also hear from Bernice Navarrete Perez and Matt Malloy from the New York City Council Association of Legislative Employees. ALE members will soon vote on their first-ever contract covering close to 500 New York City Council staffers. We at the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour have been honored to have members of the ALE at our microphones throughout their multi-year organizing campaign. The ALE has since become the largest bargaining unit of its kind in the nation, while also clearing a pathway for so many others in the process.

We finish up this week’s episode with a real struggle in progress down in Atlantic City, New Jersey where the United Auto Workers [UAW], representing casino workers in three of the city’s nine casinos, have joined forces with a grassroots coalition of union and non-union workers who want to finally put an end to smoking in their workplaces. Smoking, of course, is a well-documented cause of cancer and premature death.

Beverly Quinn, president of UAW Local 8888, who is a blackjack dealer at the Tropicana, is joined  by Nicole Vitola, a non-union blackjack dealer at Borgata, who was one of the founders of CEASE — Casino Employees Against Smoking’s Effects.

Last week, the UAW and CEASE  sued New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy for violating their constitutional rights by continuing to exempt Atlantic City casinos from New Jersey’s Smoke-Free Act passed all the way back in 2006.

Listing to the entire show below: