“Right to Work” laws don’t give anyone the right to a job – they weaken unions by giving workers the “right” to opt out of paying dues when a majority of their co-workers have voted for union representation and are paying their fair share. New Hampshire legislators are considering SB61, a “right to work” law, […]
Across the country hotel and restaurant workers are fighting for “Right to Recall” – that is, calling on employers to rehire their furloughed employees as they reopen. But too many hotels are looking at the pandemic as an opportunity to shed older career employees and replace them with younger and cheaper hands. That’s why the […]
In a disturbing trend of recent decades, struggling Catholic hospitals have been acquired by for-profit operators. In these hospitals, unions are doubly important, because they frequently represent the only protection of patient care standards from corporate cost-cutters seeking to enhance profits. The Massachusetts Nurses Association reports that this is the situation at St. Vincent’s Hospital […]
A California grower has filed a lawsuit striking at the heart of farmworker union organizing – one that could have catastrophic effects for workers trying to form unions in other sectors. Bishop Robert McElroy of the Diocese of San Diego, and the California Catholic Conference, are standing up to say no. The case will likely […]
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 […]