In a big win for American workers, the Protecting the Right to Organize or PRO Act passed the House of Representatives Tuesday by a vote of 225-206. The PRO Act would crack down on employers who fire workers for exercising their legal right to form a union, and would give “gig workers” such as Uber […]
For the past year and a half, the Catholic Labor Network has supported Music City Construction Careers (MC3), an Apprenticeship Readiness Program in Nashville that introduces participants to a career in the union building trades. Roughly a fourth of the participants have come from targeted outreach to Catholic parishes and Catholic social outreach ministries, such […]
In his 2009 Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI concluded that “The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must be honoured today even more than in the past [25].” America has an opportunity to answer this […]
A coalition forming in Northern Virginia is asking the largest regional university why public dollars are going to employers that are bad actors in their community. In Northern Virginia, George Mason University has been expanding its footprint in the region and is now the largest university, in terms of enrollment, in the state. The university, […]
March 10, 4pm ET In the mid-1990s a group of Catholic priests and union activists met while organizing solidarity for the locked-out workers of A.E. Staley in Decatur IL. They proceeded to hold the founding conference of the Catholic Labor Network in March of 1996. Join us and hear a panel of speakers look back […]
“The laborer is worthy of his hire,” we read in the Gospel of Matthew (10:10). One of the most basic principles of Catholic Social Teaching was laid out in the papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum, the principle that every worker deserves a living wage. America’s current $7.25 per hour minimum wage – less than $15,000 per […]
UNITE HERE Local 1, which represents cafeteria workers at Loyola University Chicago, has shared some good news. In the midst of the pandemic, food service workers at Loyola University have secured a new union contract with their employer, Aramark. The agreement includes recall rights for employees put out of work due to the pandemic, measures […]
Two are better than one: They get a good wage for their toil. If the one falls, the other will help the fallen one. But woe to the solitary person! If that one should fall, there is no other to help. Where one alone may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is […]
I have never met John Sweeney, however, I have one story about his commitment to organizing the unorganized. When I was 19 years old, I attempted to organize my own union with a painting company in Baltimore. I didn’t know how to organize my co-workers, but I tried based on a book I bought called “Organizing […]
Prof. Joseph A. McCartin, Georgetown University The CLN lost a loyal friend and the labor movement lost one of the great champions of its history when John Joseph Sweeney died on February 1 at the age of 86. Labor leaders reared in Catholicism have played a disproportionately large role in the shaping of the American […]