The Catholic Labor Network, as an association of the faithful dedicated to promoting Catholic Social Teaching on labor and work, has seldom ventured to speak about other policy domains. Immigration has been a partial exception, mainly because the Church and the American labor movement – for different but related reasons – have often partnered to promote an immigration reform providing a path to citizenship for America’s undocumented workers. Since immigration has once again become a central public policy issue, our readers may be interested in reviewing this history and learning how Church and labor are addressing the current moment.

The Universal Church has always upheld the dignity of all people, including migrants. Moreover, the Catholic Church in the United States has always been an immigrant Church, whose membership began with German and Irish immigrants in the 19^th century and was renewed by successive waves from Eastern and Southern Europe and now the developing world, especially Latin America. The Bishops have long been involved in care and advocacy for this portion of the flock and even received grants from the US Government to help migrants and refugees of all faiths and none as they resettle in the United States, assimilating to our country and enriching it with their gifts.

This has not always been true of the labor movement. The relative scarcity of labor in the United States relative to the old world meant that American workers have long enjoyed, if not a just wage, certainly better wages and benefits than their foreign peers. The trade unions born in the late 19^th century constantly contended with employers who sought to replace union workers with lower cost immigrant workers recruited from abroad, and these unions embraced the cause of immigration restriction as a strategy to prevent this. To a greater or lesser degree, the unions that make up the AFL-CIO persisted in this position through most of the twentieth century.

But a growing number of trade union activists, observing the increasing number of exploited undocumented workers, began to advocate for a different approach. They contended that an immigration reform that included a path to citizenship would empower these workers to exercise their legal rights and organize in trade unions. In a landmark 2000 vote, the unions of the AFL-CIO adopted this position officially on behalf of organized labor, placing them in alignment with the Church on this policy issue.

In the decades that followed, both labor and Church focused their advocacy on this reform. Public panels where clerics and trade unionists shared their endorsement of this policy became commonplace. And on the ground, both the Church (usually through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development) and the major labor unions supported many “workers’ centers” created to assist immigrant workers, documented or undocumented, who were exploited or defrauded of their wages by unscrupulous employers.

Both groups have been disappointed by developments of the past decade, as prospects for immigration reform have dimmed and public support for punitive policies against undocumented immigrants has increased.

Public opinion in the past few years has been inflamed by a seemingly insoluble challenge on our Southern border. America has long prided herself in providing asylum for those persecuted in their home country, but has also imposed limits on the number of “economic” migrants who seek to move to America to seek better jobs and opportunities for themselves and their families. Recently large numbers of economic migrants have presented themselves at the Southern border describing themselves as asylum applicants, overwhelming the government’s capacity to discern between the two.

While most Americans want our nation to continue offering asylum to the truly persecuted, many were frustrated by the chaotic scenes created by these conditions. Understandably so – Catholic Social Teaching supports the rights of migrants but also recognizes the right of nations to control their own borders. And large numbers of American workers, both organized and unorganized, remain unpersuaded by trade unionist defenses of immigrant workers.

With the recent presidential election, those who favor drastic and punitive action to bar and remove immigrants gained the upper hand. Both Church and labor have been affected by the new administration’s actions.

The Church has continued to remind the faithful and people of good will of the dignity of migrants, whatever their state. The new administration, however, almost immediately stripped the US Conference of Catholic Bishops of grant support for resettlement activities. USAID has canceled funding for Catholic organizations caring for refugees abroad. And supporters of the administration have begun to conduct tendentious and threatening “investigations” of Catholic charitable organizations offering food, shelter and care to US migrants without inquiring into their immigration status.

The nation’s labor unions have expressed solidarity with immigrant workers of whatever legal status and been highly critical of many of the harsh new policies. Their position has been crystallized by the unlawful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

It appears that Abrego Garcia was at some point misidentified as a member of a Salvadoran criminal gang, then mistakenly – in contravention of a standing judicial order – deported along with a group of Venezuelan migrants also accused of gang membership. Why has this case been a special concern of organized labor?

Abrego Garcia was not just a random victim of mistaken identity and abuse of power. He was a member of a trade union, SMART – the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Union. He was an apprentice sheet metal worker. (Sheet metal workers are construction workers who perform various tasks with sheet metal, especially fabricating and installing the ductwork for heating and air conditioning systems.)

As I have often noted, there are only two institutions in modern America that regularly invoke the word solidarity: the Catholic Church and the labor movement. Abrego Garcia’s case has attracted support from many segments of society, but no national organization has mobilized the way SMART has on behalf of a union brother in need. From the moment of his seizure and deportation, SMART has issued statements, appeared on media, and organized rallies bringing out the unions of the other construction trades (including my own, LIUNA, the union of construction laborers) and beyond. As SMART President Michael Coleman explained,

Kilmar, our Local 100 brother, is a resident of Maryland and a sheet metal apprentice who works full-time to support his wife and five-year-old son, who has autism and a hearing impairment. He came to the United States as a teenager 15 years ago, and it is my understanding that he was legally authorized to live and work in this country and had fully complied with his responsibilities under the law. He did not have a criminal record and is, in fact, an example of the hard work that SMART members pride themselves on. And yet, the Trump Administration still — aware of his protected status — deported him to El Salvador, leaving his wife to discover that information from photographs in a news release.

In his pursuit of the life promised by the American dream, Brother Kilmar was literally helping to build this great country. What did he get in return? Arrest and deportation to a nation whose prisons face outcry from human rights organizations. SMART condemns his treatment in the strongest possible terms, and we demand his rightful return.

The Catholic Labor Network will continue to report on the developing story of Church and labor responses to immigration policy as events warrant.

Clayton Sinyai, CLN Labor Advisor

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?

 

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.”

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