Amazon has made headlines recently for fighting its own workers seeking to organize in unions at distribution centers in Alabama and New York. It turns out that workers’ rights aren’t necessarily respected on Amazon construction sites either, as a group women workers learned while finishing drywall at a new Amazon distribution center in Beltsville, Maryland. […]
This year the Maryland legislature is considering a law implementing paid family leave, with broad support from labor, the Catholic Church, and an array of community-based organizations. Financed by a modest payroll tax split between employer and employee, The Time to Care Act would guarantee 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to workers […]
A guest contribution from CLN member Laurie Konwinski The workers who harvest fruits and vegetables, milk cows, and tend other farm animals do not have the same labor rights as other workers in New York State. The same is true in almost every other state. It seems no coincidence that during the Jim Crow era, […]
Guest Contribution from CLN Member and Public Defender Jeff Ross The Maryland Office of the Public Defender (OPD) is the largest legal services provider in the state and is charged by statute with representing indigent clients in a wide array of proceedings, including criminal trials, juvenile proceedings, appeals, post-conviction proceedings, and proceedings affecting parental rights. […]
At the start of the pandemic, both business and leisure travel ground to a halt, and hotels abruptly laid off most of their staff. As a result, we have seen a nationwide movement for “Right to Recall” or “Right of Return” – state and local policies requiring that hotels, upon reopening, offer employment to their […]
In remarks given in his general audience on 12 January 2022, the Holy Father dedicated himself to the discussion of St. Joseph the Worker, drawing conclusions on the dignity of work and just treatment for workers. Reminding us that people in the synagogue at Nazareth were scandalized that the son of a carpenter presumed to […]
courtesy of Mark Piper Winters in Wisconsin are cold, but on one particular evening it wasn’t just frigid but bleak for the employees of the Allen-Edmonds shoe factory in Belgium, WI. In January 1984, an Allen-Edmonds shoe factory went up in flames — a total loss. It appeared that the non-union 250 employees would be […]
As a matter of Virginia law, cities and counties in the Old Dominion have the option to recognize unions of their employees and engage in collective bargaining with them. As a matter of Catholic Social Teaching, however, the right of workers to join unions is a natural right. That’s why the Catholic Labor Network is […]
On New Year’s Day, Pope Francis released his message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace. In an interesting twist, the Holy Father listed labor or work alongside dialogue and education as a tool for peacebuilding. Why labor? Labour is an indispensable factor in building and keeping peace. It is an expression of […]
“People Are # 1 ” is a book about the 81-day strike by thousands of Union grocery store workers in the Puget Sound Area of Washington State in 1989. It was a fight against corporate greed. The workers won because they had the support of other unions, churches, community organizations, and consumers. It was SOLIDARITY […]