Catholic Labor Network Report Documents More Than 600 Catholic Institutions with Unions

/2 Comments/in /by

Did you know that more than 1 million American workers are employed by Catholic institutions? It’s true – our Church, in conducting worship, educating the faithful and engaging in corporal works of mercy has built a veritable empire of Churches, hospitals, nursing homes, colleges, schools and social service agencies. These institutions offer us the opportunity to exemplify Catholic Social Teaching in the management of our own organizations.

Workers at many Catholic organizations, especially Churches and K-12 schools, lack the protections of American labor law when they try to form unions. As religious institutions they are exempt from the interference of the government, including the National Labor Relations Board. But that doesn’t mean that Catholic Social Teaching doesn’t apply to these workers. On the contrary, the Bishops in their 1986 Pastoral Economic Justice for All observed that:

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… We bishops commit ourselves to the principle that those who serve the Church—laity, clergy, and religious—should receive a sufficient livelihood and the social benefits provided by responsible employers in our nation…. 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. (347, 351, 353)

We are pleased to report that we have identified more than 600 Catholic institutions that bargain with unions representing their employees. That’s a sign of joy and hope. Unions and management don’t always agree at these institutions, but the workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively is recognized, and they serve as an example for Catholic business leaders in the private sector who have to decide whether to heed or resist when their own workers seek union representation.

Unfortunately the story is not entirely joy and hope. While teachers at approximately 300 Catholic K-12 schools have union representation, there are about 5,500 Catholic schools where teachers lack unions. When Catholic schoolteachers seek to form a union, too many Catholic administrators take their cue from the secular law instead of consulting Catholic Social Teaching, and dismiss their desire out of hand – or even threaten them with discipline. And in recent years several Catholic colleges and universities have taken similar action when their adjunct faculty sought to organize.

Gaudium et Spes (68) reminded us that the right of workers to organize is a natural right that comes from God, not a gift from the labor board. ALL Catholic institutions should be prepared to honor that right.

CLICK HERE for the 2021 Gaudium et Spes Labor Report

Labor Day

/in , /by

The Working Catholic: Labor Day
By Bill Droel

International Workers Day (May Day), the counterpart to our September Labor Day, was inspired by an 1886 event here in Chicago. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor obtained a city permit for a May rally/demonstration in the Haymarket area (now a trendy restaurant spot). Late in the evening someone at the rally threw dynamite. Police began to fire wildly into the dwindling crowd. Soon seven officers and four workers were dead.
Eight workers were quickly rounded up, including a lay minister, a printer and others. Seven were found guilty by August. Two got life sentences (one of whom was killed in jail); one was given 15 years. The remaining four were hanged in November.
A couple years after the Chicago event European countries designated May 1st as Labor Day to honor the Haymarket Workers. For that reason, May 1st became the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.
And what was the issue that brought the workers to the Haymarket rally? Shorter work hours.
This was hardly the first effort in our country to reduce the working day. The 1830s saw an Eight-Hour Day Movement, details Mike Konczal in Freedom from the Market (The New Press, 2021). As part of that movement, Boston Trade Unions issued the “Ten-Hour Circular.” (Presumably they thought eight was unachievable.) This statement prompted six months of rotating strikes and protests across Boston. It was used in Philadelphia to start a general strike. There was a big parade after which the city passed a ten-hour workday law. In Baltimore the city mechanics, drawing on the same statement, won a ten-hour day. “Demands for time could unify workers facing different working circumstances,” writes Konczal.
By 1868 Pennsylvania had suggested “an eight-hour workday as the default.” When it came to enforcing this suggestion or any other work-related law, the obstacle was overcoming the prevailing attitude that contracts are “a foundational form of freedom and government should never interfere with markets,” says Konczal. The contract need not be a written document. The worker knew the score when she or he took the job. The freedom of contract assumption, then and now, is a fallacy because “government and courts intervened in important ways,” but not in the interest of workers. Laws and court decisions were for the most part intended “to boost the power of bosses and owners while limiting and stymieing the actions of workers.”
The notion of an eight-hour day gained traction during the Great Depression. In 1930 W. K. Kellogg (1860-1951) changed the work schedule at his cereal company. Production went to three shifts per day, six hours each. An employee normally clocked 30 hours per week. Wages were increased by 12.5%. “This will give work and paychecks to the heads of 300 more families in Battle Creek,” Kellogg said.
The union at Kellogg proudly issued progress reports, documenting improved efficiency, decreased unit cost and dramatic reduction in injuries. Other well-known companies (Remember Hudson Motor Car?) joined the experiment. However, after World War II workers and their unions wanted to participate in the consumer boom. They pushed for more hours in order to get more pay, including overtime. Kellogg gradually phased out the 30-hour week and completely eliminated it by 1985, writes Benjamin Hunnicutt in Kellogg’s Six Hour Day (Temple University Press, 1996).
Covid-19 presents an opportunity to experiment with remote work, flex time and other work arrangements. The topic of shorter hours is also in the mix because our Covid-19 economy has meant a shortage of competent workers in some key sectors. Thus, some business executives see reduced hours as a tool for recruitment and retention.
To be continued…
Droel is associated with National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).

Columbia, MD Hotel Workers Fighting to Save Their Jobs

/1 Comment/in /by

Sandra Mendoza (center), a parishioner at St John the Evangelist, worked at the hotel for 29 years before the pandemic temporarily closed the facility. When it reopens she hopes to resume her work, but but the owner is seeking to replace the entire workforce.

With the pandemic receding, most hotels are resuming operations and beginning to call back their idled employees. Many report struggling to find workers. But one hotel is promising NOT to call back its 80 longtime employees: the Merriweather Lake House Hotel in Columbia, Maryland. Last week the Catholic Labor Network joined the workers and a host of faith and community organizations in calling on the owner, Costello Construction, to recall the long-serving staff to their jobs.

Before the pandemic the hotel was known as the Sheraton Columbia, and its employees – some of whom had worked there for decades – were represented by UNITE HERE Local 7. Costello closed and renovated the hotel during the pandemic and apparently hopes to reopen the hotel under its new name with a new, non-union workforce.

Catholic Social Teaching regards a properly formed business enterprise as a partnership between capital and labor. The labor of these hotel workers created the hotel’s value in the first place, and they have already suffered great economic hardship during the pandemic. They are depending on a return to work for their livelihood and economic future, and deserve to be recalled to service.

Please keep these workers in your prayers and stay tuned for opportunities to support their campaign for just employment.

Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act advances to Senate floor

/in /by

US Bishops endorse PWFA

On August 3, in a bipartisan 19-2 Health, Employment and Labor Committee vote, the Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act (PWFA) was sent to the floor of the US Senate. On August 9, the US Bishops’ Committees on Domestic Justice and Human Development, Pro-Life, and Defense of Marriage sent an unusual joint letter of support to Congress urging passage of PWFA.

Too often, women workers must choose between the demands of their jobs and the health of their unborn babies. The Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act would require employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant women in the workplace – for instance, assigning light duty to women in later stages of pregnancy if available. It’s a commonsense pro-life, pro-worker and pro-family measure. The measure passed the House in May but remained bottled up in committee on the Senate side until just a few days ago.

For much of the year, the Catholic Labor Network has been organizing its members and friends to conduct zoom calls with US Senate staffs in support of PWFA.

The Bishops’ letter begins:

On behalf of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, the Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), we write in support of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, S. 1486, which will make the workplace a safer environment for nursing mothers, pregnant women, and their unborn children.

Catholic teaching is clear that policy choices around work should be made to support the family because “family life and work mutually affect one another.” The Catholic bishops of the United States have repeatedly called for circumstances of employment that better support family life, especially in the challenges associated with having children…

To read the Bishops’ letter in its entirety CLICK HERE

Remembering Rich Trumka, AFL-CIO President

/1 Comment/in /by

The Catholic Labor Network mourns the loss of AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka last week.

Trumka was a champion of working families and a friend of the Network. As a Catholic union leader, his faith and his vocation pointed in the same direction: solidarity, the key concept bridging the world of labor and Church.

A third-generation mineworker from Western Pennsylvania, Trumka rose to become president of the United Mineworkers of America, a legendary labor organization, leading the union through the bitter 1989 Pittston strike. In 1995 he teamed up with another union leader motivated by his Catholic faith, John Sweeney of the Service Employees International Union to win the leadership of the AFL-CIO Read more

Catholic Labor Schools

/3 Comments/in /by

Readers of this newsletter probably know that the Catholic Church endorsed the right of workers to organize as a basic element of Catholic Social Teaching in 1891, when Pope Leo XIII issued his Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum. But did you know that the Church in the United States played an active role in preparing workers to exercise that right?

In 1935 the U.S. Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, leading to a burst of organizing activity by workers in factories, shops and warehouses. New unions like the United Auto Workers and the United Steel Workers sprung up – and so did a network of Catholic “labor schools.” In these labor schools housed in Catholic colleges and universities and even Parish social halls, Catholic workers learned the basic skills of union organizing and administration – parliamentary procedure, handling grievances, negotiating contracts. Through the 1940s and 1950s thousands of Catholic working men and women were formed in these labor schools and became active in the labor movement.

It happens that one of these labor schools is still in existence: the Labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston. The late Fr. Ed Boyle, SJ, Executive Secretary of the Guild in the 1980s and 1990s, was one of the founding members of the Catholic Labor Network. Today the Guild continues to offer courses in union skills and administration to working men and women in the Boston Area under the leadership of Executive Director Dave Kowalski of the Utility Workers Union of America.

400 Faith Leaders Say: PRO Act Now!

/in /by

This week faith activists delivered a letter to all 50 U.S. Senators calling on them to pass the PRO Act, making it easier for workers to form a union. The letter, signed by 400 faith leaders nationwide representing dozens of denominations and traditions — including Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv, of Lexington KY — urges Senators to pass the Act and protect the dignity of workers.

“Because we believe in the sacred worth of both work and workers, we support the “Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO)” Act, which will strengthen and expand the right of workers to form unions, bargain collectively, and engage in collective action without fear of retaliation by their employers,” the letter states. Read more

Social Doctrine Part II

/in , /by

The Working Catholic: Social Doctrine Part II
BY BILL DROEL

Modern Catholic social doctrine dates from May 1891 with the publication of On the Condition of Labor by Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903). Customarily, social encyclicals are subsequently released on significant anniversaries of On the Condition of Labor.
In May 1981 Mehmet Ali Agca, a criminal from Turkey, shot Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) in St. Peter’s Square. Thus John Paul II’s anniversary encyclical was delayed until September 1981. It is titled On Human Work.
Every worker is equal in dignity, says John Paul II. That’s because the dignity of work originates with the person doing the work; the person who raises children, instructs students, assists homebuyers, manages portfolios, takes orders at the drive-through window, crafts legislation, develops affordable housing or supervises a manufacturing plant. A boss cannot confer dignity. An executive secretary is no more dignified than the night janitor. Every worker is equal—not necessarily in pay or expertise, but equal in dignity prior to, during and after the job or task.
The word work, according to John Paul II, is any activity that comports with God’s on-going creation and redemption. A homemaker is a worker. Unemployed workers, volunteer tutors and chief executives are all workers. A gun trafficker is not a worker because she or he detracts from the plan of God. A predatory lender is not a worker. An adult who abuses children is not a worker.
The design of an economy, the policies of a specific business, or the management style of a boss or the level of cooperation among fellow workers make it easier or harder to experience holiness through work. On Human Work says that the first purpose of any economy or business is the fulfillment of its workers. Fulfilling work is some combination of putting bread on the family table, benefitting society with a needed service or product, participating in a team effort and growing in self-knowledge. If a company first has regard for its workers, it will likely also respect its suppliers and customers or clients. (Remember, its workers include the shop hands, janitors, executives, nurses, top partners, drivers, public relations personnel, sales force and more.) That company with competent management and a needed product or service will likely be profitable.
The best test of whether a company respects its workers is its wage structure. “In every case a just wage is the concrete means of verifying the justice of the whole socioeconomic system” and each business within it, writes John Paul II. “It is not the only means of checking but it is…the key means.” Get wage structure right, the company and society will be right. Wage structure, by the way, includes the top (not paid too much) and the bottom (not paid too little).
On Human Work names other considerations for a whole, holy economy or business. John Paul II warns against an authoritarian business or a collectivist economy. No surprise coming from a champion of anti-communism. He likewise warns against neo-liberal individualism. No surprise coming from a Catholic. Instead, he favors businesses that value subsidiarity (bottom-up decision making), participation and solidarity (solidarność).
John Paul II devotes a section to the “importance of unions,” and he affirms “the right to strike.” He reminds employers and employees that the disabled have “ideas and resources” and can be offered a job “according to their capabilities.”
On Human Work concludes with an intriguing section titled Elements for a Spirituality of Work. John Paul II, in a totally neglected injunction, says that the whole church has “a particular duty to form a spirituality of work…which will help all people come closer, through work, to God.” Such spirituality is “a heritage shared by all.”

Next up: Pope Francis’ contributions to social doctrine. For now, obtain John Paul II’s Gospel of Work edited by Bill Droel (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $7 discount price).

Catholic Labor Network hosts Priest-Labor Colloquium at annual assembly of the Association of US Catholic Priests

/2 Comments/in /by

Pictured, left to right: Fr. Neil Pezzulo (Glenmary), Fr. Tuck Grinell (Diocese of Arlington), Fr. Randy Phillips (Archdiocese of Detroit), Fr. Jim Murphy (Diocese of Madison), UNITE HERE union members Jose Maquin and Uriel Perez-Espinoza, and Fr. Eugene Pocernich (Archdiocese of Milwaukee).

Last week the Catholic Labor Network was pleased to join the Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP) in Minneapolis for their annual assembly, and to offer a colloquium on Ministering to Workers in the Wake of COVID.

The colloquium featured testimony from two members of UNITE HERE Local 17, the union representing hotel workers in the Twin Cities. Jose Maquin, a worker represented by the union, and Uriel Perez-Espinoza, a former hotel worker now on the union’s staff, shared the devastating impact of the pandemic on hotel workers: the industry largely shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, leaving workers without a source of income or their employer-provided health insurance coverage. Mr. Maquin and Mr. Perez-Espinoza then took questions from the participants and the group enjoyed a lively discussion of the place of unions in Catholic Social Teaching.

Members of the AUSCP are deeply committed to the Church’s social doctrine; the organization intentionally picked a union hotel where they knew workers’ rights would be respected. Another highlight from the event was a group visit to the location where George Floyd was killed by a former Minneapolis police officer to listen to local voices, to pray and to reflect on racism in America.

Would you like to work with the Catholic Labor Network to organize a labor colloquium for priests or lay leaders in your community? Contact [email protected]

Tackling Crew Change Crisis One Jab at a Time

/2 Comments/in /by

Readers of this newsletter should be familiar with the pandemic-driven crew change crisis that had some 400,000 mariners confined onboard ship for up to a year without relief. As nations shut their borders to prevent the spread of the virus, they disrupted the system by which fresh crews are transported by air to a port to relieve their peers after their tour of duty. By the end of the year it was clear that only widespread vaccination of mariners could ease the logjam, but how do you get the shots to men and women who are usually at sea?

That’s where Catholic Labor Network Spiritual Moderator Fr Sinclair Oubre and CLN member Doreen Badeaux come in. A seafarer himself, Oubre directs Stella Maris-Diocese of Beaumont, and Doreen is the Secretary General for the Apostleship of the Sea-USA in busy Port Arthur, Texas. They track the arrival of ships in the port. Working with the Port Arthur International Seafarers’ Center, Port Arthur Health Department and the National Guard, they formed rapid response teams that would vaccinate the mariners during their brief shore leave – or even onboard the ship if they were not granted leave.

“It’s ironic,” said Doreen Badeaux, who works for AOS-USA. “On shore, people were worried that these men and women might infect us with COVID. In reality, THEY should be afraid of US.” The mariners had boarded their ships before the pandemic peaked and, isolated at sea, were generally safe from infection. They needed a vaccine to safely disembark and mingle with those of us on shore who might carry the virus – especially if they intend to head for an airport and fly home, their tour of duty complete.

The vaccination effort has been especially welcomed by the many mariners from the global South, where the shots are in short supply. A large number of seafarers served by Stella Maris in Port Arthur hail from India or the Philippines.