Tobacco farm workers face sub-minimum wages, human trafficking, pesticide poisoning, inadequate housing, nicotine poisoning, COVID, unscrupulous labor contractors, and laws that make it difficult to form unions. For years, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) has organized among these farm workers, but gains in one location are often undermined by losses in another.
On March 31, President Joe Biden announced his American Jobs Plan from the Carpenters’ union training center in Pittsburgh, PA, and it wasn’t by accident. The president’s $2 trillion proposed infrastructure build-out is informed by two assumptions: first, that investing in modernizing America’s roads, bridges, and utilities will pay off in economic growth and public […]
The Catholic Labor Network marked March 31, Cesar Chavez’s Birthday, with a program on the state of the farm labor movement. The highlight was a presentation by Julie Taylor, leader of the National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM), the interfaith solidarity organization that accompanies farm labor organizations in their campaigns and struggles. (CLN is a member […]
“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 […]