The typical way workers form a union in the United States is ugly. When a majority of workers expresses interest in forming a union, management makes it their mission to talk them out of it by fair means or foul. At best, they force employees to sit through long lectures on the clock while they badmouth unions and hint that they might close their doors if the workers exercise their legal right to join a union and bargain collectively. At worst, supervisors fire the ringleaders to intimidate the others. The process culminates in a representation election run by the National Labor Relations Board. Whatever the outcome, it leaves both labor and management bitter for years thereafter.

There is an alternative. Some employers, preferring amicable relations with their workforce, announce at the start of the process that the decision to join a union or not belongs to the employees. Instead of waging a bitter campaign leading to a labor-board sponsored election, they just tell the workers: show me that a majority of you have signed up to join a union and we’ll bargain with the union you have chosen. This process is called “card check.”

Card check can bypass a lot of hard feelings between company and workers, but it relies on a critical intermediary – the two sides need a third party they both trust to actually count the cards. In this role, it’s not unusual to turn to clergy. Read more

It’s not always wages and benefits that drive workers to organize. In the Kingspan factory in Santa Ana, California workers are seeking to form a union and bargain collectively because the company was taking risks with their health.

Kingspan, an Irish multinational, produces materials for green building construction and says on its website that “buildings should be healthy and inspirational, optimizing the benefits of daylight and fresh, clean air.” Unfortunately, the company’s own factories are failing this test.

Without proper exhaust ventilation, sanding, grinding and welding often generate hazardous airborne particulate matter, putting workers at risk of respiratory illness. Of particular concern is PM2.5 (particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers) because they can bypass the natural filters in your nose and mouth, penetrating deeply into the lungs.

Several concerned workers teamed up with SMART (the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers’ union) and U. California Irvine scientist Dr. Shahir Masri to test the air quality in the Santa Ana facility. Dr. Masri equipped them with personal air monitors they wore on the job for three days, and analyzed the results. Their concerns were founded: in several work locations they were being exposed to unhealthy concentrations of PM2.5.

Why should we, as Catholics, be concerned about this? According to Catholic Social Teaching, every worker deserves safe and healthy working conditions. As Pope John Paul II wrote in Laborem Exercens (1981): “Among these rights there should never be overlooked the right to a working environment and to manufacturing processes which are not harmful to the workers’ physical health [19].”

The company asserts that these problems have been addressed, but the workers are skeptical. They are campaigning to join SMART and gain a right to bargain over wages, working conditions and especially safety and health on the job.

One way Catholic institutions can demonstrate their faith – and evangelize the world – is by honoring Catholic Social Teaching in their labor relations practices. Many do this by recognizing and bargaining with unions representing their employees and by paying a living wage to workers in all job classifications; some do so by obliging their service contractors to do the same. Georgetown University has now broken new ground in this field with a construction procurement policy targeting abuses common in that industry. Read more

Workers ask participants to boycott hotel until they are returned to work

For decades these workers, from housekeepers to banquet servers, had made the Sheraton Columbia the premier venue for weddings, meetings and conferences in Maryland’s Howard County – that is, until a new owner purchased the hotel and decided to throw them out like yesterday’s rubbish. Now the workers are fighting for their jobs, and asking the public not to patronize the renamed “Merriweather Lakehouse Hotel” until they get their jobs back.

Earlier this month, the Catholic Labor Network joined with community organization PATH (People Acting Together in Howard) to host a “listening session” where local clergy and faith activists could hear the story from the workers themselves.

During the meeting, clergy and parish social ministry leaders listened intently to the testimony of three workers who were seeking to return to their jobs. Angela Carrillo (pictured, in blue), a parishioner from nearby St John the Evangelist who had worked at the hotel for more than 20 years before the pandemic interrupted her career, was at a loss to understand why the new owner was refusing to rehire experienced employees. But she found some comfort learning that Marge Trenkle from the St John the Evangelist Social Ministry Team was listening closely to her testimony and bringing her story back to the parish.

This could not have happened in Baltimore, for instance, because the union and an alliance of community organizations – including the Catholic Labor Network – successfully pressed for a “right to recall” ordinance. Under the ordinance, city hotels that reopened after the pandemic were required to offer jobs to their laid-off employees before hiring replacements. But Howard County has no such law.

Fr. Ty Hullinger of Baltimore’s St Anthony of Padua Church observed,

I was deeply affected by something that one of the workers, Mr. Ty Hughes, shared at our table. As he talked about how the workers were finding their voices and building power through the boycott, he also described some of the suffering and loss that the workers have gone through, including ‘the loyalty that was stolen from the employees.’ When he shared this, it reminded me of when Pope Francis uses that same exact language of ‘robbery’ to describe the effects of unjust economies on persons and communities in The Joy of the Gospel. Here workers are being robbed of their loyalty. To know that this company has used the pandemic as a ruse to lockout workers with 5, 10, 15 years and more of experience that the hotel is unjust, immoral and it causes tremendous pain and suffering. It is also like stealing their loyalty and so much more. But the power, voice and solidarity that workers are building is what gives this boycott and movement hope. Hope that they will be given their jobs back, and that this same hope will help build power and support for workers in other places who have also lost their jobs when unjust employers use the pandemic to do the unthinkable.

Readers of this blog will be familiar with our questions about what happens when for-profit corporations purchase Catholic hospitals. No man can serve two masters, our Lord reminded us (Mt 6:24). These tie-ups inevitably bring a tug-of-war between the mission of a Catholic hospital and the mission of delivering profits to shareholders.

The St Vincent’s Hospital strike in Worcester MA is a key example. Like the CWA members now on strike at Buffalo’s Mercy Hospital, the nurses at St Vincent’s walked off the job to protest inadequate staffing levels. The strike has dragged on more than six months. Tenet Corp., which owns the hospital, has hired replacement workers whom they say will permanently replace the striking nurses – a practice that the Church has condemned, supporting efforts during the 1990s to outlaw it.

Meanwhile, a Catholic Worker community nearby has been organizing solidarity for the strikers, circulating a petition on their behalf among area Catholics and appearing at events with banners supporting the nurses. It’s great to see a Catholic Worker community bearing witness in one of today’s critical labor struggles.