Following a thorough review of the proposals submitted, Benjamin Enterprises, a minority-owned firm, was awarded a one-year contract for housekeeping services at The Episcopal Church Center effective January 4, 2010. It is not a union shop so The Episcopal Church, which believes passionately in a fair wage negotiated by the unions, hired Benjamin Enterprises, a minority-owned firm. Why? Because they were cheaper and the church hierarchy which spends millions of dollars on lawsuits and on a political agenda which grows more irrelevant by the day can't find it in its corporate heart to pay union wages.

A press release from the church said of their business practices that they were following a thorough review of the proposals submitted and awarded a one-year contract for housekeeping services accordingly. The deal included a comprehensive compensation package, laudable employee relation practices, and the use of eco-friendly supplies. Then it happened again.

In a scenario similar to one experienced by the Episcopal Church Center, General Theological Seminary was visited this past week by a giant inflatable rat.

Workers who claim they were fired by the Episcopal Church's oldest seminary after more than two decades of service took their protest to the streets - erecting a giant protest rat in front of the building. The five maintenance workers say they lost their jobs at the General Theological Seminary late last month.

The workers, who are all members of the Service Employees Union 32BJ, had been with the seminary for decades, but said they were given letters on Thursday, July 27, notifying them that their jobs would end on Tuesday, July 31. Such a loving, compassionate act by a church that bleeds inclusivity, diversity and potty training for all. These workers did not fit the bill of a "generous (financial) orthodoxy" so bally-hoed by former PB Frank Griswold. So five of them get canned. TEC's one day legal bill would have covered these five for a year even if they are unionized.

Maia Davis, a spokeswoman for 32BJ, said the union has lawyers looking into whether the seminary violated a city law giving building service workers 90 days of protection against layoffs if a building changes contractors.

The men are officially employed by Aramark, a maintenance contracting company for schools and universities. They worked for years cleaning and maintaining the Episcopal Church Center in midtown Manhattan. After they were fired on Dec. 30, nine hard-working people are in desperate need of divine intervention.

"We came to work on Dec. 30 as every day, hoping to leave a little earlier to celebrate the New Year," said Bronx native Héctor Miranda, a father of three.

"But when we got to the building, we were told that we no longer worked there. Just like that. They picked the date well to fire us."

Now, without the means to support his family, Miranda has no idea how he will pay the rent.

"Even worse," he said, "without health coverage, I don't know how I am going to pay for my wife's treatment. She is a diabetic, you know."

The workers lost their jobs - which paid standard wages and benefits - when the church canceled the contract with Paris Maintenance, a union cleaning contractor, and replaced it with the nonunion Benjamin Enterprises.

The workers had originally been employed directly by the seminary until Aramark was brought on in 2009, Davis added.

The seminary agreed that any new contractors would continue to employ the same workers with the same wages and benefits.

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