First Unitarian Church of Baltimore

Corner of Charles and Franklin Streets in Downtown Baltimore

Mailing address:
1 West Hamilton Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
P: 410-685-2330
Fax: 410-685-4133
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WORK ETHICS

by the Reverend Phyllis L. Hubbell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 1^st of September 2002

Engine 40/ Ladder 35 is a firehouse on the upper West Side of Manhattan whose firefighters responded to the disaster at the World Trade Center last September 11. Thirteen people set out from that firehouse that day. Only one came back. David Halberstam, in his new book Firehouse, writes of the firefighters code:

Calm was important; it was one of the most important words in the vocabulary of fire[fighters], and a word they did not use lightly. Staying calm was crucialfor unlike most other peacetime jobs, fire[fighters] were in the regular business of the suppression of fear. Every call might be a ticket to a burning inferno where there was no light, where falling walls and ceilings, cut off exit routes, where a floor could give out, and where a fire[fighter] could become disoriented and begin to feel [the] source of oxygen failing [as the firefighter] grew weaker and as the heat grew more fierce second by second. Therefore keeping calm was a critical part of the job ...

Doing the right thing was equally important. When the firefighters speak of a colleague who does the right thing, they mean [the firefighter] will stay at a post under terrible conditions and not panic. Doing the right thing was going in and risking your life for a trapped civilian or fellow fire[fighter]. Fire[fighters] define each other by their codes of honor, which, because of the nature of the job, are mandatory and must be instinctive. [Firefighters] have to be able to count not just on their officers, but on their buddies. Doing the right thing also involves small, seemingly unimportant things in the firehouse. It begins when you are a probie, and it means following certain customs, such as being the first one to the sink to wash the pots and pans after meals. The firehouse, like the military, is based on doing little things right, because if someone does not do the little things correctly, then that person probably wont do the big things correctly.

Why would anyone want to be a firefighter? Its true that after September 11, we are more likely to think of them as heroes. But recognition is small recompense for the frightening danger they face. They do their work in the midst of heat and acrid smoke. They are poorly paid. A firefighter in New York City with four children and an at-home spouse qualifies for food stamps. Halberstam writes that many of the firefighters in Engine 40, Ladder 35, could have doubled their pay in other jobs. Yet the waiting list to become a firefighter in New York is long. Many want those jobs so badly they work as police officers until their number comes up and they can transfer to the fire department. Many follow their fathers into the profession. (There are few women in the field. In a generation, however, perhaps some will follow their mothers.)

Lutheran pastor Reverend Robert Scholz, speaking of firefighting, told Halberstam Its passed on father to son, and sometimes, grandfather to father to son You see your father doing it, and youre proud of him. His life seems honorable and purposeful, and you see the richness of his friendships and the loyalty of these men to each other, and how, when youre young, the other firemen seem like additional uncles. And it seems so honorable.

As I read Firehouse, I could not help but think of WorldCom, Enron, Adelphia, and the many other companies that have made the headlines in recent months. It seems clear that much of what we are hearing goes beyond the ambiguities involved in creative bookkeeping. Investors in WorldCom have lost $ 175 billion altogether. Sixteen thousand of its employees have lost their jobs. (I should note that our son-in-law works for one of the WorldCom companies, but believes his job is secure. Of course, we worry, but so far, at least, he is one of the luckier ones.)Many employees have lost both their jobs and much or all of their pensions. The stock market has plummeted in part because of real losses, but in part because of a massive lack of trust, which in turn is affecting pensions and jobs. I expect that more than half of you this morning have been personally hurt by these scandalsexcept for the top executives who have made hundreds of millions in compensation and stock sales while their companies were hiding their indebtedness.

Time Magazine recently noted that in one survey more than half of corporate chief financial offices said they had been pressured by their bosses to cook the books, if not to a full boil than at least to a simmer. More than half. Think of the implications of those numbers. If they are even close to accurate, they suggest that the ethics of our businesses are in terrible shape. I find it telling that none of the recent disasters has inspired a single CEO to offer to distribute the hundreds of millions he had collected in the last year to those who must now try to find jobs at 60 and postpone retirement indefinitely. There seems to be no recognition of responsibility.

What were they thinking of? I cannot help but think there is a disconnect here, especially when I compare them to the people who work at the firehouse. According to he New York Times, although the average CEO made 70 times what the average worker earned in 1985, by 2001, the average CEO made more than 10 million dollars a year410 times what the average worker makes. Rakesh Khurana, assistant professor of business administration AT???, charges that CEOs like to compare themselves to sports stars and celebrities. The amount of money is so vast, I wonder if it begins to feel like play moneyMonopoly for big boys and girls. The CEOs and CFOs have no relationship with the average worker. Despite the disasters, despite the fraud under their stewardship, they believe they have earned their obscene salaries. There is no sense of mutual responsibility or relatedness.

Where is an ethic based on doing the right thing? Where is there care and concern for the people whose livelihoods depend upon them?

And what is the religious message here?The Buddha spoke of right livelihood as part of the eightfold path need for spiritual progress. He went so far as to list specific occupations, such as arms maker and slave trader, that he considered incompatible with spiritual seriousness. Tax collectors were on the list because profiteering was then routine. Some jobs may indeed make it difficult to grow spiritually. How can anyone spend 8 hours or much more charged with tasks that destroy the soul of other human beings or the planet and still live a spiritual life?

I am not suggesting that all upper management of companies necessarily falls into this category. I am not saying that one cannot be the head of a company and be spiritually mature. But if we do not pursue our work with the belief that the work itself is a spiritual task, we deaden our souls. During our working lives, most of us spend half or more of each weekday at our jobs. Much of the managers of these huge companies seem to have lost all sense of relationship with the people who did much of the work that paid them their millions, with the faceless investors, with the rest of us whose trust in business has been shattered. And it doesnt seem to be just the business world in which they demonstrate a lack of basic ethics: Another recent survey reported that 82 percent of CEOs admit to cheating at golf.

Unitarian Universalism, along with other religions, calls us to awareness of our interrelationship with each other and the planet. The firefighters in Firehouse know their lives depend on each other. They live with each other, eat with each other, play sports together, go off to drink together, help repair one anothers houses, and most important, share terrifying risks[.] All too often, however, companies reward failure of upper management with salary increases or golden parachutes. Jeffrey Skilling of Enron forfeited severance when he quit last year, but he has made $78 million from stock sales since 2000, while shareholders are left with stock whose value has plummeted. Joseph Nacchio, an executive at Qwest, has made $178 million in sales of company stock, while Qwest has lost $26 billion and the stock has lost 86 percent of its value this year. The same story has been repeated at Tyco, Global Crossing, AOL Time Warner, WorldCom and Adelphia. These stories are not completely new too us. Fraud, however, has now been added, and the scale of tragedy has increased.

Two weeks ago, John spoke of the need we all have to make square corners even when someone isnt looking. Surely, habits of honesty and integrity might change corporate behavior when more is at stake than who has to buy lunch at the country club. Making it a habit to develop a moral sense of relatedness might make a difference as well. When it is our sons-in-law whose pensions are at stake, even when it is our friends, we feel concerned for their welfare. We are more likely to make decisions that are in all of our best interest. But developing our sense of relatedness goes further than simply protecting the people we know intimately. Developing a sense of relatedness or connectionas I am using these termsmeans deliberately cultivating the spiritual life in order to feel a sense of oneness with the universe. Opening ones self to the interrelatedness of us all.

We do this partly by taking the time to know people and places we would not encounter normally. Setting up lunches with a cross-section of the people who work for us. Taking a day, or a week, answering phones, working machinery, sweeping the floors. Watching television and reading the news with the intention of learning about people we will never meet. And, finally, developing an inner life. Attending a church, mosque, temple, or synagogue. Developing a spiritual practice. Doing these things, not simply to find comfort for ones own personal tragedies, but with the deliberate intention of seeking the best in oneself, that place within where we experience the universe as one.

Most of us here todayperhaps all of us here todaydo not hold positions in which hundreds of thousands of peoples livelihoods depend upon our personal integrity, although all of us make individual decisions about getting and spending that have a collective impact on the world. All of us are called to develop this sense of relatedness with the universe. It is out of this sense of relatedness that the rest of us have hope of bringing peace and healing to our planet.

It is out of this sense of relatedness that we are called upon to take action to change our economic system. Religion is not just about individual spiritual growth. It must look outward as well or it becomes narcissistic. Organized religion calls us to work together to change the world. Those of you who know me know that I personally am drawn to service. I want to meet the needs of individuals. Part of the reason I belong to a church, however, is that it joins me with people who are working to change the systemto work on the macro picture.

This is a place where I join with their concerns. We need to hear the stories and recognize the pain of those who have been betrayed by the greedy and work together for change. We need to change the laws; demand enforcement. We need to join together to support watchdog organizations that pressure companies directly to change. Elections are coming up. We need to vote for the representatives we believe will act to create laws that can be enforced, those whom we believe will change the tax code to introduce less enormous disparities of wealth, who will strengthen campaign finance laws, and who will mandate that the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorneys office enforce the existing laws. We need to vote for representatives who have the personal integrity to create a government we can trust.

Leading a religious life does not end with prayer and church on Sundays. We are called as a people to be a force for good. Alone we can do much. But there is much that we simply cannot do without one another. The amount of power we speak of when we address people and companies earning hundreds of millionsbillionsof dollars a year requires power to oppose.Together we can and must change the world.

Are we as a people less ethical then we have been in any other period of history? I suspect not. We may be better in some ways. We have taken some steps to lessen injustice based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. The economic injustices we see recur throughout history in different formats. Greed and power are difficult to eradicate.

Today, we call one another to a recommitment to viewing our work and workplaces as a ministry. Let us go to work filled with determination to heal and not to hurt; to bless and not to curse. May we join together outside the workplace to make justice and compassion the law and the conscience of our country. May our words and our deeds at all times spring from the best that is within us. Let us have a daily conversation with that which we hold holy. Let us do our jobs for people. Let us find in our work a sense of rightness. Let us always be proud of what we do.

BLESSING OF HANDS

Several years ago, we did a blessing of the hands on Labor Day. We thought it would be especially appropriate to repeat that ritual today. Hands do so many things. They speak, labor, hold, hug, wipe away tears.

We invite all who would like to participate to come forward down the center aisle. As you come to the table, we invite you say these words. I commit myself again to a ministry of work. Our response will be May the work of your hands bless the world.