Wins for Maryland Workers

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Bills for Paid Family Leave, public defender union rights pass over governor’s veto

Readers of this newsletter know that the Maryland Catholic Labor Network has focused on two bills this year in the Maryland legislature. Attorneys and staff of the public defenders’ office in Maryland lack the right to organize, emphatically supported in Catholic Social Teaching, so Maryland CLN members testified in support of a bill that would let them do so. And in support of workers and families, the MD CLN joined Baltimore Catholic Charities to host a webinar on The Catholic Church and Paid Family Leave, to foster support for the Time to Care Act, guaranteeing all Maryland workers 12 weeks of paid family or medical leave. We are pleased to report that both bills have passed — over the governor’s veto!

Catholic Labor Network Marches with Immokalee Workers in Palm Beach

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On Saturday, April 2 the Catholic Labor Network joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and hundreds of their community supporters in a march through wealthy Palm Beach, Florida. The farmworker organization was calling on Wendy’s board chair Nelson Peltz to enroll the fast-food chain in its Fair Food Program.

The CIW is a farm workers’ organization based in Immokalee, Florida. Immokalee tomatoes end up on many fast-food hamburgers and sandwiches, and the CIW has successfully persuaded industry giants like McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell to source their tomatoes to growers committed to a fair labor code of conduct as part of the Fair Food Program. Wendy’s remains a holdout.

Focusing attention on recent cases of human trafficking in U.S. agriculture, CIW leaders challenged Wendy’s: how can you guarantee your food isn’t the product of forced labor? As CIW leader Nely Rodriguez argued,

It is appalling that Wendy’s has refused to commit the fast-food chain to the Fair Food Program’s best-in-class protections for nearly a decade, and especially now, given the horrific rise of modern slavery cases in North American agriculture. On April 2, we marched with a simple question for Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz: Can Wendy’s guarantee there is no slavery in its supply chain?

The sad fact is that they can’t. U.S. agriculture depends on the backbreaking labor of immigrant workers. In the absence of a union or a worker-driven certification effort like CIW’s Fair Food Program, labor abuses – ranging from unpaid wages to actual violence – proliferate.

Student organizations, faith groups, community organizations and workers’ centers turned out hundreds of sympathizers to march in solidarity with the CIW members. Beyond the Catholic Labor Network, the Catholic community was represented by a delegation from Palm Beach Catholic Charities led by Sandra Perez, and by Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, who blessed the workers after the march.

“Farmworkers are essential workers,” Wenski told Channel 5 after the march. “They work hard, they work in dangerous conditions, they work in inclement weather. They give an honest day’s work, they want an honest day’s pay, and they want to be treated with respect and dignity.”

The workers are calling upon the community to boycott Wendy’s until the chain agrees to participate in the Fair Food Program.

FemCatholic: Church can do better on paid family leave

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Of all employment benefits, you would think that the Church would be leading the way on family leave. After all, what’s more pro-life and pro-family than giving paid time off to workers to bond with a newborn child or care for a sick family member? And in fact some are. In 2016, the Archdiocese of Chicago drew national attention when it announced 3 months of paid parental leave for employees with a newborn. But website FemCatholic investigated nationwide and found that the situation in the Church nationwide was decidedly mixed.

FemCatholic reached out to the 176 dioceses across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to confirm their family leave policies. Through telephone interviews with current and former diocesan employees, FemCatholic ascertained that 31 dioceses offer fully paid maternity leave policies, 32 provide some percentage of employee salaries through either short-term disability or state paid leave laws, and 44 do not offer any paid leave.

Catholic institutions in the United States – Churches, schools, hospitals, and other organizations – employ upwards of one million workers. We have a wonderful opportunity to evangelize the world through our labor relations and employment policies. When Church institutions implement policies like paid parental leave, they send an important signal to lay Catholics in business leadership. The FemCatholic report should be a wake-up call for Catholic institutions across the United States.

Save the Date! Honoring the Memory of Msgr. George Higgins, May 1 & 2

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Twenty years ago this May 1, legendary “labor priest” and onetime Social Action Director for the bishops’ conference Msgr. George Higgins died. The Catholic Labor Network has teamed up with the Archdiocese of Washington and the AFL-CIO to memorialize the occasion with two events.

Sunday, May 1 at 11am at St. Matthew’s Cathedral Cardinal Wilton Gregory will celebrate a special Mass. A young labor priest, Fr. Evelio Menjivar of St. Mary’s in Landover, will offer the homily and some thoughts on Msgr. Higgins’ legacy.

Monday, May 2 at 3pm at the AFL-CIO headquarters (815 16th St NW, Washington DC), AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler will introduce a panel discussion on Msgr. Higgins’ legacy. Panelists will include Fr. Menjivar, theologian Meghan Clark, Ingrid Delgado of the USCCB office of Justice, Peace and Human Development, and union organizer Chuck Hendricks of UNITE HERE and the Catholic Labor Network.

All are invited to both these important events! (And both will be livestreamed for those who can’t be there in person.)

Oxfam Report Details Living Wage Crisis in United States

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Oxfam – an organization more widely known for its famine relief work – recently released an alarming report detailing the extent of the low-wage economy in the United States. The headline finding: approximately one third of US workers earn less than $15 per hour. The numbers for women and minorities were even more concerning – for instance, nearly half of Black workers earn less than $15. For a full-time worker, a $15 per hour wage amounts to $30,000 per year; it’s hard to imagine supporting a family on less than this anywhere in the United States. It’s a sign of deep structural problems in our economy that we have learned to depend on low wage labor to perform much essential service work. CLICK HERE for the Oxfam report.

Farmworker Awareness Week: March 25-31

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March 25-31 marks Farmworker Awareness Week – a week that culminates on March 31, Cesar Chavez Day. The backbreaking work of planting and harvesting our food is largely performed by immigrants from Latin America for low pay under difficult working conditions.

Like domestic workers, during the New Deal reforms farmworkers were excluded from the protection of critical labor laws such as the National Labor Relations Act (which protects workers who want to form a union) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (which sets the federal minimum wage and dictates that other workers earn overtime when working more than 40 hours per week). This means that farmworkers have had to work state by state to secure these rights, a process that remains largely incomplete. Only a few states such as California and New York have passed laws protecting farmworkers’ right to organize and form labor unions. And this year Oregon joined a handful of states that have passed overtime pay laws covering farmworkers.

The Catholic Church played a critical role in the great farmworker organizing campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, especially in California, where Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) organized grape harvesters. The UFW sought leverage through a national boycott of table grapes. Chavez, himself deeply committed to his Catholic faith, relied on allies in the Church and the wider community to promote the boycott and secure basic rights for workers in the fields.

The Catholic Labor Network is part of the National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM), an interfaith coalition standing in solidarity with farmworker organizations such as the UFW, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Today the UFW is seeking reforms in California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act to make it easier for farmworkers to form unions; the FLOC is campaigning for RJ Reynolds to clean up abuses in its tobacco supply chain; and the CIW is calling on Wendy’s to source its tomatoes from growers committed to fair labor practices. The CLN and the NFWM continue to support farmworkers in all of these initiatives.

Catholic Nursing Home Employees Strike for a Living Wage

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While employees at nearby secular competitors earn a living wage, food service employees at Our Lady of Peace Nursing Home in Lewiston New York earn the legal minimum in their community and CNAs earn scarcely more. That’s the main reason employees of the nursing home held a one-day strike in March.

The workers, represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), walked off the job for a single day on March 9. They have now resumed bargaining with nursing home, owned by the St. Louis-based Ascension Health Care.

Catholic Social Teaching calls for every worker to receive a living wage. The legal minimum wage in upstate New York is set at $13.20 per hour, or approximately $26,400 per year for a full-time employee.

Theresa Tomlin, an 11-year CNA at Our Lady of Peace, said “I have to pick up double shifts to survive. Other aides are on public assistance or have taken second jobs. People are fighting to make ends meet.”

“I’ve thought about leaving but what keeps me there are the residents. They are like family to me.”

The low wages at the facility aren’t only a problem because of Catholic Social Teaching. Employees at the facility say that staffing shortages have become severe. With nearby competitors offering wages that are $1-5/hour higher than at Our Lady of Peace, they say, it’s impossible to recruit workers.

“We all used to love it here. Not so much anymore – we are unable to give residents the care they deserve because of understaffing,” said Tresa Torcasio, a 12-year nurse at the facility and parishioner at nearby St. John’s. “You can’t get people in if they can make more money someplace else.”

Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Proposed in DC

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Few workers are at greater risk of exploitation than domestic workers. Nannies, au pairs, house cleaners, home health aides – all too often these workers work alone under the supervision of their employer, and under informal and precarious work arrangements. Sexual harassment and wage theft are frequent occurrences. To make matters worse, they have historically been excluded from coverage under labor and employment laws.

That may be about to change in Washington DC. On Tuesday, March 15, DC Councilmember Elissa Silverman announced release of the DC Domestic Workers Employment Rights Amendment Act. Read more

Will Tennessee Voters Choose Right to Work?

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A guest contribution from CLN member Frank Maurizio

Voters in Tennessee have a crucial decision coming up this fall as we are being asked whether or not the state’s long-tenured “right to work” law should be enshrined in the Tennessee constitution. The timing of this vote – in fact, its necessity at all – is odd; this deep-red state is hardly headed toward becoming a bastion of organized labor.

But Tennessee lawmakers – overwhelmingly Republican – are nervous. Tennessee, which in 2020 was the third least unionized state in the U.S., led the nation in union gains in 2021. Meanwhile, neighboring Georgia ranked seventh in an increase in union jobs.

Clearly, something is happening in the South as union activism – still far from where the Catholic Labor Network and other pro-worker groups would like to see it – is gaining strength. In my neck of the woods (I moved to Chattanooga from labor-friendly New York two years ago), we are excited by Ford’s recent announcement that it is bringing new electric vehicle and battery plants to Tennessee, and the automaker is reportedly open to a unionized workforce.

This has given the right-to-work champions more impetus to get the constitutional amendment approved by voters in November. It has also resulted in a GOP-led effort to ban organizing through card check at companies that receive state incentives to move here.

The fate of that effort remains uncertain but the legislative majority and its allies in the business community are putting their full weight behind the right-to-work constitutional amendment. That means, of course, that those of us who support the right to organize have a responsibility – and an opportunity – to remind voters that right-to-work laws are nothing more than a continued effort to take advantage of workers and thwart their chance to earn a fair wage.

And we might just have an opening: A Gallup Poll last year showed union support at its highest level in more than 50 years at 68 percent of those polled (Labor Unions | Gallup Historical Trends). Another study found that 60 million Americans would join a union if they could. Promising trends, indeed.

As AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said at a recent convention in Nashville: “Workers are fed up and America is taking notice of our collective action. … Working people are waking up and understanding the value of labor unions.”

As the vote on the constitutional amendment gets closer in Tennessee, let’s hope that Brother Redmond is right.

Justice Too Long Delayed is Justice Denied

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An update on farmworker overtime from CLN Member Laurie Konwinski

New York State farmworkers are still not covered by the overtime laws that apply to other hourly workers.  As reported in a recent CLN blog post, New York State established a Wage Board to consider lowering the threshold are which farmworkers are eligible for overtime.  After hearing many hours of testimony, the three-person panel called for overtime for agricultural laborers to remain at the 60-hour per week threshold until January 1, 2024.  At that point, they recommended that the threshold be reduced to 56-hour work week, and continue to be reduced by four hours every two years.  This means it will take until January 1, 2032 for farmworkers to reach parity in overtime protection and be eligible for overtime after 40 hours of work.  Even this decade-long delay in equity is not guaranteed.  The recommendation by the Wage Board is not binding.  It must be approved by the New York State Commissioner of Labor, whose decision has not yet been announced.