Loyola Marymount University Update

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During the last week of February, a delegation of members of the Catholic Labor Network, non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty from Loyola Marymount University, LMU students, and partners from Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) gathered in prayerful solidarity to deliver a printed copy of the petition to the Jesuit leadership at LMU.

They were received by Edward (Eddie) Siebert, S.J., Rector of the Jesuit community at Loyola Marymount University and Secretary of the Board. Fr. Siebert greeted the delegation, listened attentively to the concerns shared by faculty and students, and accepted the petition on behalf of the community.

The delegation respectfully requested that he pass the petition along directly to President Poon and the members of the LMU Board of Trustees. Fr. Siebert declined that specific request.

While this was not the outcome we had hoped for, the exchange was marked by civility and honest engagement. We are grateful for the opportunity to speak face-to-face and to bear witness to the dignity of the NTT faculty and the Church’s social teaching in a spirit of dialogue.

As our petition stated, Catholic Social Teaching is clear that the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively is not a political concession but a moral principle grounded in human dignity. The Church has affirmed this teaching consistently, and the Catholic Labor Network exists precisely to help our institutions live more deeply into that identity.

The LMU non-tenure-track faculty continue to seek a return to the bargaining table in good faith. Their desire is not conflict but dialogue–not division, but a university community that reflects its Catholic mission in both word and practice.

Catholic Labor Network Regarding St. John’s University (NY)

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For as long as the Catholic Labor Network has existed, St. John’s University in Queens, New York, has served as a witness to Catholic Social Teaching on labor and work by engaging in collective bargaining with the union chosen by its faculty, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Thus we are shocked and saddened to learn that the University leadership has elected to terminate this practice and announced it will no longer recognize or bargain with the union.

Since Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum in 1891, the Church has endorsed the right of workers to form unions and bargain collectively. Lest there be any confusion, the US Bishops clarified in their 1986 Pastoral letter on the economy, Economic Justice for All, that employees of Catholic institutions enjoy this right. “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 [353].”

This clear teaching is why the other leading Catholic institutions in New York City recognize and bargain with unions representing their employees:

  • The Archdiocese of New York Catholic Schools bargains with the teachers represented by the Federation of Catholic Teachers, OPEIU;
  • Archcare bargains with CNAs and Home Health Care Aides are represented by SEIU 1199
  • Catholic hospitals across New York bargain with the New York State Nurses Association and SEIU 1199; and
  • Fordham University bargains with clerical employees represented by the OPEIU, adjunct faculty are represented by SEIU 200, and graduate assistants are represented by CWA 1104.

The Catholic Labor Network urges St. John’s to honor Catholic Social Teaching and follow the example of these other Catholic institutions and return to the bargaining table with the unions selected by the St. John’s faculty.

The Political Machine

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Machine Politics and the Church by Bill Droel

The Catholic church and the political machine had a symbiotic relationship in Chicago and elsewhere for many years. So argues Dominic Pacyga in his latest book: Clout City (University of Chicago Press, 2025). Chicago politics was “a mixture of the sacred and the profane, a combination of cultural and religious roots and more worldly pursuits,” he writes. “Chicago is a secular, capitalist city, but one with a religious core.” Pacyga includes synagogues and Jewish organizations on the religious side. Both the machine and the church/synagogue were compassionate alternatives to the Protestant establishment, popularly called downtown or big corporate.

Within his timeframe, 1870 to 2023, Pacyga profiles many of the key actors in the machine, most of whom were Democrats.  The machine’s efficient years were 1930-1965 when it was largely associated with Richard J Daley (1902-1976), who served 21 years as Chicago mayor and 23 years as the party’s chair in the county. His son Richard M Daley, now in his mid-80s, subsequently served 22 years as mayor.

The machine was hierarchical. The boss relied on faithful commissioners to oversee city services. With rare exceptions the boss also controlled the city council. The council member (called the alderman in Chicago lingo) was paired with a ward committee person. The next level (covering maybe four to a dozen blocks) was the responsibility of a precinct captain, whose day job was often with the city.

The machine had a practical communitarian mindset in contrast to society’s dominant philosophy of individual achievement. A collective mentality was nurtured, in part, by ethnic and religious culture, says Pacyga. He uses De La Salle High School in Chicago’s near southside as an example. It was “a political incubator” for machine politicians, Pacyga details. Five mayors including the Daley’s graduated from De La Salle. Plus, the school educated two county presidents and “countless other politicians, judges and city officials [and] numerous businesspeople, police officers, firefighters and a host of city workers.” That high school stressed order, hierarchy and loyalty. It “encouraged Catholic attitudes toward fairness, duty and sin, often in deep contrast to the rampant individualism and unbridled capitalism” of Chicago.

Of course, the machine had corruption. However, neighborhood people overlooked it, as long as the community at large benefited from jobs, emergency assistance, license considerations, snow removal, trash collection, fire and police protection. The machine “existed side by side with an approach to political governance that derived from and centered on the communalism of Chicago’s immigrant and working-class communities.”

A similar description of New York’s machine, called Tammany Hall, is found in Terry Golway’s Machine Made (W.W. Norton, 2014). Again, political corruption was taken for granted. But for New York’s immigrants, especially those from Ireland, Tammany was able “to mediate the capriciousness of laissez-faire capitalism.” It delivered jobs and social services to working families in a respectful manner, untainted by paternal noblesse oblige.

As in Chicago, the New York machine relied implicitly on a foundation in the Catholic experience. Golway devotes several pages to Archbishop John Hughes (1797-1864), describing him as “aggressive and political to his very marrow.” Hughes, originally from Ireland, explained the feeling of Irish and other immigrants: For the first five days of my life, I was “on social and civil equality with the most favored subjects of the British Empire. Then I was baptized as a Catholic and became a second-class citizen.”

In time the machine model of urban politics disintegrated, Pacyga says. The corruption became too enriching for too few while service delivery declined. Further, the post-1960s reform movement within the Democratic Party drew its leaders into elite circles. They associated with tech barons and favored focus groups over the word on the street. The Democrats supported several cultural causes foreign to the Catholic sensibility. Suburbanization was the big factor in the machine’s decline. As immigrants left the city, they took on aspirations of the upper-class. Their Catholicism, if it remained at all, was like the individualism of evangelicals.

Nowadays, does a local politician or a pastor have any influence on one’s difficulties with health insurance or with internet providers or with immigration policies or employment opportunities? Does the notion of community have any traction in a society where the sum of striving individuals is the ethical norm? Is a government or church model based on services in any way compelling to today’s young adults? Should there be a new machine and what form would it take?

Droel edits a printed newsletter on faith and work: INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

St Clare’s Hospital Retirees Win Damages in Pension Fight

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It’s a sad reality that too often Catholic institutions deny their employees their just rights, and do so with impunity because our cherished First Amendment freedoms prevent the federal government from sanctioning them. We hear about this most often when Catholic schoolteachers or adjunct faculty seek to organize in unions. Employees of Catholic hospitals enjoy the protections of the National Labor Relations Board – but their pensions are not regulated by the ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) laws that protect other private sector workers.

ERISA requires most employers to set aside sufficient funds in advance in a trust to pay workers’ retirement benefits, so if the company goes bankrupt the workers still get their pension. But in 2017 the Supreme Court ruled that religious hospitals are not necessarily bound by ERISA, and administrators of Catholic hospitals have been known to fill their employees’ pension accounts with IOUs. In the event of a bankruptcy, dedicated hospital workers are left holding the bag, and the bag is empty.

That’s what happened at St Clare’s Hospital in the Diocese of Albany. The hospital closed in 2008 with a badly underfunded pension plan. In 2019 the pension fund ran out of money and more than 1,100 nurses, EMTs, orderlies and others lost their much-needed pension checks. The workers filed a civil suit against the St. Clare’s and several officers of the corporation, including recently retired Bishop Scharfenberger. Last week a jury awarded $54.2 million in civil damages to the defrauded workers. Bishop Scharfenberger, assigned 10% of the liability, promptly filed for bankruptcy himself.

For more on the story, read this account in the National Catholic Register.

Disturbing Development at St John’s University

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For decades, St John’s University in New York City stood as an almost unique example of a private sector university whose tenured faculty enjoyed collective bargaining rights. Today it appears that this shining example of labor relations on the model of Catholic Social Teaching is in danger, and the consequences could threaten the union rights of thousands of Catholic school teachers across New York state.

Back in the 1970s Catholic school teachers across the country began to organize in unions – as is their right under Catholic Social Doctrine. However, Cardinal John Cody of Chicago took a hard line against the lay faculty, refusing to recognize their union and claiming exemption from the National Labor Relations Act under the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. The irony of claiming religious freedom in order to violate the tenets of the faith was seemingly lost on the Supreme Court, which duly ruled that Catholic school teachers had no legal protections under the NLRA. Catholic school teacher unions became the exception rather than the rule, existing only where the local Bishop tolerated them out of fidelity to Church teaching.

In a handful of states, state legislatures stepped into the gap where the NLRA had stood. The most prominent is New York, which gave the state’s Public Employee Relations Board jurisdiction over the Catholic schools (and universities) no longer covered under the NLRA. Teachers can vote for or against unionization in PERB elections and teachers at large Catholic school systems like those of the Archdiocese of New York or the Diocese of Buffalo enjoy union rights and contract protections. But developments at St. John’s could endanger those rights.

When the AAUP filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against St. John’s with the PERB over a contract bargaining dispute, the university went further than denying the university was engaged in an Unfair Labor Practice, raising the issue of First Amendment protections. If the university is successful in litigating this point, the faculty at St John’s and at Catholic schools across New York state could lose their union rights altogether. 

For more on the dispute at St John’s, read this account by Brian Fraga in the National Catholic Reporter.

Bipartisan House Majority Votes to Restore Federal Employee Union Rights

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On December 11, a bipartisan majority of House members voted to approve the Protect America’s Workforce Act, a bill that would restore the union rights of hundreds of thousands of federal government employees. The vote was 231-195, with 20 Republicans joining all the House Democrats to pass the legislation.

The bill was necessary because in March 2025 President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order stripping most federal employees of their union rights, citing a dubious claim of “national security.” The Catholic Labor Network responded with a letter to the President urging him to reconsider and respect the rights of workers to organize. To date, the Catholic Labor Network has not received a response from the administration.

The Protect America’s Workforce Act now moves to consideration in the Senate.

Nurses at Texas Catholic Hospitals Vote for Union Representation

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In an election held December 9th and 10th, registered nurses at St. Joseph Health in Texas’s Brazos Valley voted to join National Nurses United. The union reports that it will now represent “some 750 registered nurses who are part of St. Joseph Health Regional, with hospitals in Bryan and College Station, and three critical access facilities: St. Joseph Health Burleson Hospital in Caldwell, St. Joseph Health Grimes Hospital in Navasota, and St. Joseph Health Madison Hospital in Madisonville.”

Congratulations to the nurses on their win! We pray that the hospitals, part of the CommonSpirit network, and the nurses quickly reach agreement on a first contract. 

Windmill Farms Boycott

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Low wages. Grievous working conditions. Few workers in the United States face greater exploitation than migrant farm workers. In the 1970s, Cesar Chavez, motivated by his deep Catholic faith and his commitment to trade unionism, led the United Farm Workers in multiple organizing campaigns in California supported by consumer boycotts. Many Catholic social justice activists of the era cut their teeth by leafleting outside supermarkets in support of the UFW grape boycott. Today workers at Windmill Farms in Washington State are fighting to form a union with the UFW.

While most private sector workers are protected by the National Labor Relations Act, farm workers were excluded from that legislation. They can’t appeal to the federal government for a union representation election – they have to rely on strikes and boycotts to win fair treatment. That’s why the UFW is calling on supporters of farmworkers to boycott the mushrooms until the company recognizes the union and bargains a first contract. 

Given the strong Catholic ties to the UFW, you are invited to support this boycott and the farm workers involved. Windmill Farms is owned by Instar Asset Management, a Canadian private equity firm. To send them a message that you support farm workers, CLICK HERE and sign the UFW petition.

Loyola Marymount Faculty Rally to Demand Union Rights

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On Tuesday December 9, 2025, hundreds of Loyola Marymount University non-tenured faculty and their supporters rallied to demand that the university resume collective bargaining with their chosen union, SEIU Local 721. 

For more than a century, Catholic Social Teaching has expressly held that workers have the right to organize in unions and bargain collectively. That’s just what the non-tenure track faculty at LMU did this year, voting for representation by SEIU Local 721. But in September, the University abruptly ended negotiations and announced that it would no longer recognize or bargain with the union. Moreover, in order to avoid facing an Unfair Labor Practice charge before the National Labor Relations Board, the university had the audacity to cite its religious identity, claiming that under the First Amendment it was exempt from NLRB jurisdiction! 

In October, the Catholic Labor Network directed letters to LMU President, Board of Trustees and Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez expressing our concern about the situation. Referencing the Bishops’ 1986 Pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, which affirmed that employees of Catholic institutions enjoy the right to organize in unions, we asked the University to resume bargaining with the union chosen by the faculty, and encouraged the Archbishop to investigate the university’s apparent violation of Church teaching. Though a few members of the Board of Trustees did respond to our letters, the Catholic Labor Network has not, to date, received a response from either the university or Archbishop Gomez.

CLN Submission for National Pastoral on the Laity

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The USCCB Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth coordinated a consultation for a new national pastoral document on the laity. The Catholic Labor Network hosted three synodal listening sessions in October, 2025. This is a summary of what CLN submitted to the USCCB.

Across all consultations, participants discerned a common movement of the Spirit: a renewed awareness of the laity’s baptismal vocation and a deep desire to align the Church’s teaching, witness, and structures with the Gospel’s call to justice and love.

Their conversations revealed both realism and hope — realism about the challenges of polarization, institutional inertia, and inconsistency; hope in the courage and creativity of lay disciples who are already transforming the Church from within.

There were 5 main takeaways across the many conversations:

  1. Living Baptism through Work and Witness

    The most active theme across sessions was the integration of faith and work. Participants described baptism as a lifelong call to live as priest, prophet, and king: sanctifying daily labor, speaking prophetically against injustice, and exercising leadership through service. They see their professional and community work as sacred — not separate from Church life, but its extension into the world.

    Many called the dignity of work a life issue, linking their ministry with the defense of human dignity and the common good. They emphasized that Catholic Social Teaching is not an optional add-on but the living expression of the Gospel in public life.

  2. Co-Responsibility and Synodality

    A strong current of reflection focused on co-responsibility. Participants understand their role not as passive recipients of pastoral care but as partners in the Church’s mission. They long for a culture of shared discernment and collaboration between clergy and laity, rooted in synodality and mutual respect.

    They also voiced that co-responsibility must be invited and modeled from leadership. When clergy and bishops honor lay expertise, the Church becomes more credible and united in its witness to the world.

  3. The Holy Spirit’s Work of Renewal

    Participants saw the Holy Spirit actively renewing the Church through grassroots movements, lay networks, and ministries that unite faith with justice. The Spirit is at work wherever Catholics listen to one another, empower the marginalized, and act with courage and humility.

    They testified to seeing the Spirit in intercultural parish communities, in collective discernment, and in the perseverance of believers who continue to labor for justice despite discouragement. “Things move quickly when the Holy Spirit is at work,” one noted — capturing the sense of momentum that accompanied the discussions.

  4. Hopes and Concerns for the Future

    Participants expressed both gratitude and concern. Their hopes include the rise of new lay leadership, expansion of grassroots chapters, and greater preaching and education on Catholic Social Teaching. Their concerns focus on the Church’s credibility when Catholic employers fail to honor workers’ rights, and on the gap between social teaching and institutional practice.

    They believe renewal will come from conversion — a willingness of the Church to listen, learn, and act alongside the laity in building just relationships, both within and beyond its walls.

  5. The Joy that Sustains the Mission

    Despite honest frustration, the tone of the listening sessions was joyful and forward-looking. Participants spoke of “joy that is not toxic positivity,” grounded instead in trust that God is at work through ordinary people.

    They see joy as both fuel and fruit of mission — the quiet confidence that the Gospel can still change hearts, workplaces, and systems.This joy expressed itself in laughter, solidarity, and gratitude for belonging to a Church that, though imperfect, continues to call and send.

The overarching takeaway is clear: the Holy Spirit is animating a renewal of the Church through the witness of the laity. Participants affirmed that the future of Catholic life will depend on deepening co-responsibility, recovering the dignity of work, and embodying Catholic Social Teaching in every level of Church life.

They envision a Church that listens before it lectures, collaborates rather than controls, and lives its teachings from the ground up. In their words and actions, lay Catholics are revealing that renewal is not a program — it is already happening wherever faith, justice, and joy meet.