Building Chapels
The United Covenant Union organizes low income older adults and informal sector workers into base communities - which we happen to call chapels. The typical UCU chapel is a faith community, worker cooperative and peer group - all in one.
Chapels are peer-driven, self-development communities that work to develop community, dignity, and agency among the growing ranks of the informal workforce.
These are the three initiatives (notice we did not say "program") of a UCU chapel:
Prayer Meetings
All UCU chapels have a weekly prayer meeting in which members pray together, report on their health, read a passage from scripture and discuss how it calls them to take action in the community.
Labor Mediation Contracts
UCU chapels are forming agreements with non-profit property owners in which they refer chapel members to clean and landscape the property. Chapels act as official procurers and mediators.
Community Bargaining
Chapels train members who are informal sector domestic workers to write contracts that protect from wage theft. In partnership with local congregations, chapels work to build a network of people who will hire members.
Organizing the Breadlines
Most chapel members are fixed income older adults or informal sector workers (house cleaners, baby-sitters, dog walkers, and personal drivers). Both of these constituencies are not often members of a congregation and rely on food banks that are housed in congregations.
For chapel members, the food bank is a place where they experience both gratitude and shame; gratitude for the relief they receive, but shame about their having no agency over their own food security.
A UCU chapel organizes food bank clients in their capacity as informal sector workers - and works to nurture a culture of community, dignity and agency. In gathering for weekly prayer meetings, members examine how scriptures call them to take action for justice in the community. Chapels seek labor mediation contracts with congregations, in which the chapel refers its members to provide janitorial and landscaping work for a congregation - and acts as the mediator. Through community bargaining, chapels train their members in contract-writing, and work with congregations to build a pool of domestic employers who agree to contract with chapel members.
In all of these things, a chapel seeks to build the power (ability to act) of its members.
Beloved Community Chapel, UCU's first chapel, meeting in 2019 planning a meeting of domestic workers