A Letter to President Trump concerning Federal Employees

/7 Comments/in , /by

Dear Mr. President,

The Catholic Labor Network (CLN) is a Catholic nonprofit and private association of the faithful in the United States that unites clergy, religious, laity, and people of goodwill to advance the principles of Catholic Social Teaching on the dignity of work and the rights of workers through prayer, education, and action.

We write with deep concern regarding Executive Order 14099, Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program, issued on March 27, 2025. This order would significantly limit the ability of more than one million federal employees to exercise their fundamental right to collective bargaining. We respectfully urge you to rescind this executive order.

From the time of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891, the Catholic Church has consistently affirmed the moral and human right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. This teaching is not limited to private-sector employment. The Church has long held that the dignity of workers is not dependent on whether their employer is public or private; rather, it is a reflection of their inherent human dignity.

In Laborem Exercens, Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “The important role of union organizations must be admitted: their task is to defend the existential interests of workers in all sectors.” This includes public servants who dedicate their labor to the common good—educators, health professionals, public safety officers, and countless others.

Your administration has voiced a commitment to defending the dignity of work and uplifting working families. This Executive Order, however, directly undermines that commitment and contradicts long-standing Catholic teaching on the rights of workers.

On behalf of our members and supporters—Catholics committed to justice in the workplace and the common good—we respectfully and prayerfully urge you to rescind this order and reaffirm the right of federal employees to organize and bargain collectively.

Catholic Identity Invoked to Evade Worker Justice

/4 Comments/in /by

Three Catholic institutions have made the news recently for their mistreatment of workers.

  1. St Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady NY doesn’t want to pay the pension benefits it owes to retired nurses.
  2. Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Superior in Wisconsin doesn’t want to pay Unemployment Insurance taxes for its workers.
  3. Marquette University does not want to bargain with a union organized by their contingent faculty.

What else do they have in common? All three are abusing their religious identity to get away with it – using their First Amendment religious freedom rights as a shield to violate the rights of workers with impunity.

The nurses and other employees at St. Clare’s were expecting a substantial pension benefit in their retirement. In most private sector jobs, your pension is safe because the federal ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) law requires employers to set aside enough money in a trust to cover future benefits. Religious institutions – including hospitals – have opted out, citing their religious freedom. It appears that the administrators at St Clare’s (and other religious hospitals) never set aside those funds and left retirees holding an empty bag. Check out Church Pensions Sidestep Oversight in the Wall Street Journal for details.

Meanwhile, if the Diocese of Superior gets its way, its Catholic Charities will no longer pay into the Wisconsin state UI system and any future workers laid off will be denied state unemployment benefits. The Diocese is saying that because of the First Amendment, they are not required to participate in Unemployment Insurance and want to opt out. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court balked on this claim but the Diocese is taking its demand to the US Supreme Court.

Finally, Marquette University is refusing to bargain with a union formed by its contingent faculty. They say that as a religious institution they are not required to honor the National Labor Relations Act and that they refuse to bargain collectively with their faculty. They are not the only Catholic college to take this stand.

The First Amendment’s religious freedom protections are a precious gift, allowing Catholics and all Americans to observe the dictates of their conscience – but no well-formed conscience is telling administrators at these institutions that they ought to deny employees their promised pensions, refrain from participating in Unemployment Insurance, or to bust unions. Invoking your religious freedom rights to evade basic requirements of worker justice is cynical and likely to scandalize the faithful. How can we ask Catholic business leaders to recognize workers’ right to organize when Catholic colleges won’t? How can we expect them to honor their promises to retirees when Church institutions don’t? How can the Church advocate for the unemployed while seeking to evade its own obligations towards them?

 

President Begins Term with Alarming Moves against Worker Rights

/3 Comments/in /by

Modern Catholic Social Teaching began with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter Rerum Novarum reflecting on injustices against workers in the modern industrial economy and, importantly, defending their right to organize in trade unions for collective bargaining. We in the Catholic Labor Network have been deeply alarmed that President Trump has begun his term with significant moves against workers’ union rights.

In 1935, the US Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law. The NLRA made it unlawful for employers to fire or otherwise retaliate against workers who seek to form a union in their workplace. The NLRA created an independent five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charged with protecting workers in their exercise of that right. Presidents appoint members to serve staggered five-year terms on the NLRB subject to Senate approval. They cannot be removed except “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

When the President assumed office, there were only three sitting Board members in place, due to political conflicts between the President and the Senate. In late January, the President dismissed Board member Gwynne Wilcox – not because of malfeasance but because he was dissatisfied with her decisions on the board strongly in support of workers’ rights. The action leaves the NLRB without a quorum and thus unable to address disputes.

The NLRB protects the rights of the majority of American workers who are employed in the private sector. Federal employees enjoy more limited union rights under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, rights protected by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). Their unions are not empowered to negotiate wages and benefits, but they are permitted to negotiate certain terms and conditions of work. Under President Biden, some of their unions negotiated contracts allowing certain employees to work remotely. On February 3, the President’s Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo overriding these contracts and ordering these employees to report to work in the office.

This may seem like a minor issue, but a number of these employees have relocated under the telework arrangements in their contracts and will now have to move again in order to keep their jobs. More importantly, if the President and his subordinates are empowered to ignore union contracts whensoever they choose, the President has effectively eliminated their right to collective bargaining and union protections. And to prevent the FLRA from acting to uphold these rights the President fired its pro-worker chair.

At a time when the President’s staff have placed large numbers of employees on administrative leave without due process, and when he has empowered billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk to identify vast swathes of federal employees for dismissal, this denial of rights to federal employees is doubly alarming. Musk has a well-established anti-labor animus. Workers at his two most successful companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have faced retaliation for exercising their right to collective action. Musk’s lawyers have responded in the courts by advancing a novel argument that the NLRB is unconstitutional (an argument also endorsed by erstwhile rival Amazon). Such a determination would overturn nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent and strip most American workers of their most important legal protections.

The president’s initial actions in office suggest a dire threat to the legal rights of American workers. The Catholic Labor Network urges its members to organize in defense of American trade unions and pray that he changes course.

Workers’ Chapel Dedicated in New York City

/1 Comment/in /by

In November 2024, Fr. Brian Jordan OFM – a New York City labor priest and good friend of the Catholic Labor Network – dedicated a Workers’ Chapel at St. Francis of Assisi parish in Manhattan. Attending the dedication Mass, along with assorted local political leaders and union officers, was New York City AFL-CIO President and Catholic Labor Network Board member Vincent Alvarez.

The chapel is intended to offer a place of reflection and prayer to New York workers. It was inspired by the role of Franciscan friars in the Middle Ages who frequently served as spiritual directors for the various craft guilds.

“The opening of the Workers’ Chapel at St. Francis of Assisi Church is a testament both to the dignity of Labor and the shared humanity of all working people,” said Alvarez. “As a centrally-located space open to all faiths and backgrounds, the Chapel serves as a sanctuary for reflection, unity, and prayer, embodying the spirit of solidarity that is at the heart of the Labor Movement.”

“The introduction of the Workers’ Chapel at St. Francis of Assisi Church is a welcome addition to the union construction and larger labor community,” said Gary LaBarbera, President of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. “It is now an accessible and inclusive haven of prayer, worship, and solitude for our members and other workers throughout the city, offering them the opportunity to take a step back from their busy lives to reconnect with their collective and individual spirituality and values.”

Windmill Farms workers seek to organize with UFW

/in /by

Among all workers in US, farmworkers probably suffer the most exploitation and abuse. Often undocumented immigrants, they toil for long hours at poverty wages harvesting the food we eat. In one of the great inequities of the American economy, most of us enjoy access to produce at unsustainably low prices, subsidized by the low cost of farm labor. If any workers deserve the full protection of our labor laws, it’s farm workers – yet farm workers are excluded from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act, the law that protects other US workers when they want to form a union.

That doesn’t mean that farmworkers can’t organize, but it makes it much harder. Case in point: the mushroom farm workers of Windmill Farms in Washington State. They have been fighting to form a union with the United Farm Workers for more than two years, with union activists facing constant harassment, discrimination and retaliation for their efforts.

Today Windmill Farms is owned by a Canadian private equity investor, Instar Asset Management. Recently Catholic Labor Network board member Fr. Clete Kiley addressed a letter to Instar CEO Gregory Smith. Having met with some of the workers, Fr. Kiley expressed his deep concern regarding the ongoing labor abuses at Windmill and concluded:

I urge you to meet with [UFW President] Teresa Romero and the folks from the UFW as soon as possible to resolve these issues. I have to believe your investors would expect you and your team to take every action to resolve this situation and provide a fair and safe workplace for these workers. My deepest hope is that soon and very soon you will have met with the UFW and the workers and resolved these concerns.

Please keep the Windmill Farm workers in your prayers.

A journalist looks at Catholic labor relations

/in /by

In early October, OSV News, which provides stories to Catholic Diocesan newspapers around the country, published an important story on labor relations at Catholic institutions. Reporter Kimberly Heatherington checked in on how Catholic schools, universities and hospitals addressed different themes of worker justice, including the right to organize and bargain collectively through a labor union. The picture was decidedly mixed.

It shouldn’t be this way, according to no less an authority than America’s Catholic bishops. In their 1986 pastoral letter on the economy, they wrote:

On the parish and diocesan level, through its agencies and institutions, the Church employs many people; it has investments; it has extensive properties for worship and mission. All the moral principles that govern the just operation of any economic endeavor apply to the Church and its agencies and institutions; indeed the Church should be exemplary… All church institutions must also fully recognize the rights of employees to organize and bargain collectively with the institution through whatever association or organization they freely choose.

The italics are the bishops’ own. The bishops of 1986 realized that we needed to practice what we preached about social justice – to do otherwise would be to court scandal. How can we expect lay Catholics in positions of business leadership to respect workers’ rights if Catholic institutions did not?

While Heatherington found some positive stories to share, the behavior of many Catholic institutions was – to say the least – hardly exemplary. Too often, we are falling down on the job. Or rather, our nonprofit Catholic institutions are behaving much the same way as lay, for-profit corporations: busting unions, paying poverty wages when they can get away with it.

I hope this important story will be picked up widely in Diocesan newspapers, and I hope you will check it out and share it widely. To check it out, click on the link below:

At Catholic institutions, unions and employers negotiate tensions for the sake of mission

 

 

Calling all CLN movie fans!

/in /by

Maryland Catholic Labor Network activist and AFGE Assistant General Counsel J. Ward Morrow will be offering an online course on Labor in the Movies. Participants will view labor history as portrayed in film, discuss that history and learn how it may be applicable today in the recent union efforts of Starbucks and Amazon employees. The six-session course runs Tuesday nights starting October 31. It is offered through the John Hopkins Alumni Association but is open to all (fee required). CLICK HERE for more information.

“Co-Creators With God”

/in /by

A Labor Day weekend Homily by CLN Spiritual Moderator Fr. Sinclair Oubre

Yes, everyone here knows that on Monday, our nation celebrates the day after the twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time. We will gather with our family, fire up the grill, and possibly, hand crank some ice cream, and say: “Thank God, the Pharisees challenged Jesus’ disciples about not washing their hands before eating!”

No, its Labor Day Weekend, and we all know that for most of us, we will get a paid-Monday off, and we will use that time to catch up on some chores, gather with the family for a cookout, maybe catch a sports game on the TV, or go to Houston and watch the Astros beat the Diamondbacks.

What we won’t be doing is remembering the great Irish Catholic Peter McGuire, and his great work in founding the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and the organizer of the first Labor Day Parade in New York City on September 5, 1882. (My grandfather and father were members of the Carpenters Union.)

Very few of us will give much thought to the importance of the common working man or woman, and how their work is both absolutely necessary for the quality of life that we enjoy here and in every land. Nor will we give much thought on how our work and the work of our neighbors, no matter how society considers the work humble or replaceable, is a participation in God’s ongoing creation and the building up of his Kingdom.

Since 1969, our United States Bishops have issued a Labor Day Statement. I have posted it to our Facebook page so that you can read it, and reflect on its teachings.

This year’s statement begins with these words:

“This Labor Day, let us recommit ourselves to building together a society that honors the human dignity of all who labor. Through the treasure of Catholic social teaching, we have a long history of proclaiming the essential role labor plays in helping people to live out their human dignity.”

Unless the work is abhorrent, obscene or repugnant, we not only create wealth for the needs of our families, assist in expanding the common good, but we also fulfill God’s will when he created man and woman on the sixth day.

“Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth.

“God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.

“God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened.”

This dominion is not permission to exploit and despoil, but it is a call to be a good steward of the treasure that God has entrusted to us.

We must ask ourselves the question, “How can we take these treasures that God has given us, and use them to give God glory and improve the lives of our brothers and sisters?”

Jesus gives us a model of what this work is that we do. When Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth, and teaches at the synagogue, the people wonder at his words, and remark about his past in the town.

St. Mark records that Jesus’ neighbors remark:

“They said, “Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands! Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?”

Jesus was not just the son of a carpenter, but he was a carpenter himself. The work of the carpenter is to take items found in God’s creation, and shape them to lift up men and women.

Jesus the carpenter took wood drawn from a tree, shapes the wood to be a chair or a table, thereby lifting his neighbors from having to sit on the ground and eating off the ground. Jesus the carpenter took wood drawn from a tree, and formed it into a bed so that his mother and his neighbors would not have to sleep on the ground. Jesus the carpenter took wood drawn from a tree, and built a dwelling, and with the craftsmen of their skills provided safety and security from the hardship of weather and the dangers of evil persons.

By making the chair, the table and the house, in so little of a way, Jesus participated in the creation that his Father began in the first chapter of Genesis.

Jesus the carpenter also become the precursor of Jesus the Savior. By building the table, he anticipates the place where the bread of life will become manifest. By building the chairs, he anticipates the time when he will be raised on the cross, and thereby raise us up from the dust of sin and death.

The priests and the deacons often preach how we should imitate Our Lord Jesus. We should imitate his prayerfulness. We should imitate his courage to speak the truth. We should imitate his love of the week and the poor. We should imitate his abandonment of his will for the will of the Father. But on this Labor Day weekend, we also should imitate his work in lifting up his mother Mary and his neighbors. We should imitate his work in protecting and guarding his neighbors.

Now Satan, the deceiver, continues to roam this world, and just as at the time of Adam and Eve, he continues to try to deceive us. When in Genesis 3:1ff, he twists God’s command, which leads Eve and Adam to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The twisted lies of Satan continue in our own day. He whispers the lie that “we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.” He whispers that we are only happy when we make as much money as we can. He whispers that we don’t have to look where and how things are made, just that we must spend as little as possible so that we have has much as possible.

If we follow Satan’s whispers, we will be like Charles Dickens’ Unconverted Scrooge.

As we fire up the grill, prepare the hot dogs and hamburgers, make the potato salad, and look forward to the Blue Bell, please remember why we have this Holiday:

To celebrate the work that you do at the service of your family and neighbors;
And to join ourselves evermore closely to our Heavenly Father in his ongoing creation in this world and the world to come.

Joy and Hope: Catholic Institutions with Unions

/in , /by

During the year periodically we have to devote our newsletter to Catholic institutions engaged in union-busting behavior out of line with Catholic Social Teaching from Rerum Novarum to today. Happily these employers are not the last word. The Catholic Labor Network has identified more than 600 Catholic institutions that instead demonstrate Catholic Social Teaching by bargaining with unions representing some or most of their employees.

In accordance with our tradition, each Labor Day the CLN offers its Gaudium et Spes report listing these institutions by State and Diocese. New entries this year include Catholic Cemetery workers in Youngstown OH who organized with the Machinists; nurses at Ascension St Agnes in Baltimore MD who joined National Nurses United; and Non-Tenure Track Faculty at two California Catholic Universities, University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount, who joined the SEIU. Most of these workers are still negotiating a first contract so please keep them in your prayers! Unfortunately, the list of unionized Catholic schools has shrunk a bit as organized schools in some urban cores closed.

To find out what’s up in your state, check out the report:

Gaudium et Spes 2024