In trade negotiations, American unions stand up for Mexican workers

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Both the Church and the US labor movement have expressed concern that today’s global economy and trade relationships allow the owners of capital to escape obligations to workers and the poor. So the Catholic Labor Network is pleased to learn that — under pressure from the AFL-CIO — the renegotiation of NAFTA has yielded new protections for workers, especially in Mexico.

A decade ago Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2009 Encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate, explained the challenge globalization poses for workers and the poor:

The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market… The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum[60], for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level [25].

It’s gratifying to note that during negotiations the labor unions of the United States did not prioritize tariffs, or quotas on imports. Rather, they were determined to defend the right of Mexican workers to organize freely in unions of their choosing. Too often in the past, Mexican workers have been represented by paper “unions” dominated by the employer or political bosses; the USMCA includes new mechanisms to ensure that workers’ freedom to choose their representatives is respected.

Under NAFTA, large manufacturers pit North America’s workers against one another by threatening to relocate production if concessions are not granted, creating a race to the bottom. USMCA has taken an important step forward for workers in all three countries, a much-needed expression of solidarity in challenging times.

Catholic Labor Network recognized as Association of the Faithful

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Fr. Sinclair Oubre, JCL

The Archdiocese of Washington has recognized the Catholic Labor Network as an Association of the Faithful under Church law. So, what does that mean?

The Code of Canon Law, promulgated in 1983, was the product of the document of Vatican II. The theology contained in the concilliar documents like the Lumen Gentium, Guadium et Spes, and Sacrosanctum Concilium formed the foundation for the norms and prescripts of the new code.

One of the lesser known, but no less important Vatican II documents was Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity. In paragraph 2, the Council Fathers wrote:

They (the laity) exercise the apostolate in fact by their activity directed to the evangelization and sanctification of men and to the penetrating and perfecting of the temporal order through the spirit of the Gospel. In this way, their temporal activity openly bears witness to Christ and promotes the salvation of men. Since the laity, in accordance with their state of life, live in the midst of the world and its concerns, they are called by God to exercise their apostolate in the world like leaven, with the ardor of the spirit of Christ.

Recognizing that laity had a share in the evangelization and sanctification of the world, Saint Pope John Paul II promulgated canons that recognized and promoted the laity’s apostolic work in the world.

Canon 298 §1 defines the duty of these associations of Catholics who have been recognized by a competent ecclesiastical authority, “In the Church there are associations… in these associations the Christian faithful…strive in a common endeavor to foster a more perfect life, to promote public worship or Christian doctrine, or to exercise other works of the apostolate such as initiatives of evangelization, works of piety or charity, and those which animate the temporal order with a Christian spirit.”

By Archbishop Wilton Gregory establishing the Catholic Labor Network as a Private Association of the Christian Faithful, he recognized that the CLN has a role in “the penetrating and perfecting the temporal order, in promoting a more perfect life, in promoting the Catholic Social Teaching related to worker and workers, in promoting initiatives of evangelization, and in performing works of piety and charity.

Now, when the Catholic Labor Network promotes Catholic Social Teaching relating to work, the cause of sainthood for Servants of God Dorothy Day and Brother Marinus, and collective bargaining among workers, it is doing so no long as a collection of Catholics committed to these activities, but as a recognized Private Association of the Faithful, who have an explicit place in the mission of our Catholic Church.

Letter recognizing CLN as Association of the Christian Faithful

Christmas Shopping II

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The Working Catholic: Christmas Shopping Part II
by Bill Droel

Clothes were once made in the U.S.  Yes, labor abuses occurred in our domestic production–in cotton plantations, mills and factories. Conditions greatly improved, however, with the labor laws and reforms introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) and his Labor Secretary Frances Perkins (1880-1965).
Through the post-World War II years, New York City’s Garment District “had more apparel factories than anywhere else in the world,” Dana Thomas, a fashion expert based in Paris, writes in Fashionapolis (Penguin, 2019). From there production expanded to Bronx, Brooklyn, Rochester and Chicago; and in the 1970s to NYC’s Chinatown and to Los Angeles.
Starting in about 1980 two trends converged to create the apparel industry as we have it today. First, President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) encouraged free trade deals. It soon became more profitable for clothing companies to import from countries where wages are low and building standards are nearly nonexistent. Second, fast fashion became the new concept. U.S. consumers, even those with money, crave cheap clothes—everything from socks to formal wear. Consumers shop “off-the-rack” or expect “next day delivery” from retail outlets where wages are relatively low.

How many clothing items per U.S. shopper? Jessica Iredale writes about blue jeans for Wall St. Journal (12/1/19). “Staying on trend can be an exhausting, not to mention expensive exercise in denim acrobatics,” she says. She has 18 pairs in her closet and a few more in storage bins under her bed. Of these, Iredale has three “in regular rotation.” The others are mostly out of fashion. By one estimate, the average number per U.S. adult (women plus men) is seven pairs in the closet. That adult regularly goes to the alley or resale shop because that adult buys four new pairs per year. Each shopper (including those shopping for their children) buys 68 garments per year.

There are varying degrees of exploitation involved in the overseas production of each garment. The most harrowing production is in Bangladesh, Thomas details. There are thousands of apparel factories there, employing 40million workers. The doors are locked at many of those plants in order to keep workers from leaving during the day. The world learned of this inhumane practice in April 2013 when the Rana Plaza collapsed, killing 1,134 workers and injuring another 2,500. The Rana Plaza tragedy “is the impetus” for every subsequent improvement in Bangladesh manufacturing, says Thomas.
Thomas summarizes the reforms that occurred and didn’t occur after the Rana Plaza collapse. IndustriAll Global (54 bio Route des Acacias, Geneva, Switzerland; www.industriall-union.org) developed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety (www.bangladeshaccord.org). About 200 fashion lines and retail outlets signed up. Teams of engineers, including leaders from Canada, made the rounds of Bangladesh factories. The Accord participants were mostly European firms. The U.S. firms, spearheaded by Walmart, started the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, similar to the Accord. However, the U.S. Alliance is voluntary and uses in-house inspectors. Human rights activists believe it is deficient.

President Donald Trump is interested in the U.S. trade deficit. The apparel industry which thrives on free trade and on consumers’ desire for fast fashion annually accounts for $77billion of the trade deficit, according to Thomas. Might Trump find ways to bring clothing manufacturing back to the U.S.?
His original MAGA hat was “assembled in the U.S.A.” (The hats could not say “made in the U.S.A.”) The MAGA hat is now a knockoff, selling for $6.99 from 16 importers. All the other items in Trump’s failed clothing line were foreign made, including in some sweatshops. White House advisor Ivanka Kushner’s apparel items, a line which went under in July 2018, were imported from China, Indonesia and Bangladesh. The Kushner subcontractors employed women toiling in sweatshops. Thomas begins her book with details about Melania Trump’s cynical jacket, worn on a 2018 visit to a detention center. It cost $39 from a Spanish manufacturer (unless our government overpaid for the item).

On short notice it will be difficult to buy completely clean clothes during this holy season. A donation to a human rights group is appropriate. I recommend International Labor Rights Forum (1634 I St. NW #1000, Washington, DC 20006; www.laborrights.org) and Worker Rights Consortium (5 Thomas Cr. NW #500, Washington, DC 20005; www.workersrights.org).

Social justice is a relatively new virtue in that it once was not possible to do anything about wrongdoing that occurred in remote locations or in complex systems. Today social justice, though difficult, is possible. Action on behalf of justly-made clothes is possible and, thanks to conscientious students, many consumers and a few sophisticated groups, there is momentum behind justice in the clothing industry.

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

Marco Rubio Discovers Catholic Social Teaching

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Senator Marco Rubio made quite an impression this month with a speech at Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business – one that questioned the wisdom of the market and invoked Catholic Social Teaching as a corrective. “On the political right, where I come from,” he explained, “we’ve become defenders of the right of business to make a profit…but we have neglected the rights of workers to share in the benefits they create for their employer.” The Catholic internet (and the CLN facebook page) went crazy in response, probably because it’s so vanishingly rare to hear thoughtful discussions of Catholic Social Teaching in mainstream venues.

Rubio’s talk is emblematic of the turmoil in America’s conservative movement right now. American conservatives, unlike those in most of the world, have taken it as an article of faith that free markets are efficient and ethical in their distribution of goods and opportunities. But after Donald Trump won the presidency on a message that global free trade favors elites and robs working families, that faith has been shaken. A growing number of conservative thinkers are floating alternative principles of social organization in place of free markets, some good (e.g. Catholic Social Teaching) and others not-so-good (e.g. blood and soil nationalism). The conservatives’ clash of ideas has been especially prominent in the conservative Catholic magazine First Things, where Rubio first published these thoughts.

Rubio has drawn a lot of skepticism from progressive Catholics, who don’t want to hear about his ideas until he endorses the PRO Act. But I think he deserves some credit for getting people talking about CST, and especially for doing it at the CUA Busch Business School, whose scholars generally idealize the market while trying to reconcile it with the Catholic faith (usually by crediting the free market with all good economic outcomes and blaming distortions of the market for all evil ones). I have to side with John Gehring’s assessment in Commonweal:

Rubio deserves some credit for criticizing a profit-only corporate mentality and acknowledging that markets alone are not enough to serve the common good. But he neglected to mention unions or a living wage even once—scandalous omissions for a speech taking a Catholic approach to the dignity of work. This was, however, consistent with Rubio’s legislative record of opposing increases to the minimum wage, supporting so-called “right-to-work” laws, and working to pass tax cuts that benefit corporations and the rich—all priorities more in line with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce than Catholic social teaching.

For other takes on Rubio’s talk, check out…

Airline Food Service Workers: One Job Should Be Enough!

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Across the country, workers picket airports calling for living wage and affordable health care

Fr. Gene Pocernich joins food service workers at Chicago O’Hare airport

Some 20,000 workers across the United States toil in kitchens preparing food and beverages for the nation’s major airlines, but fewer than 5% can afford the family health care insurance offered by their employers. That’s one reason workers rallied and picketed at more than a dozen major airports on November 26, just before the Thanksgiving travel rush. They shouldn’t have to get two jobs to provide health insurance for their families.

Read more

Building Futures in Washington DC

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In many cities in the United States, the building trades unions are experiencing an acute shortage of candidates, particularly women and minorities, for their apprenticeship schools.  For low-income workers, entering a union apprenticeship program can be life changing for them and their family. These trades offer excellent wages, healthcare, retirement and most importantly a stable job for low-income workers that experience insecurity and gripping poverty that is extremely difficult to overcome.

In Washington DC, a program run by the local AFL-CIO labor council has been working to solve this problem by training and placing low-income DC residents in apprenticeship programs and construction jobs. The six-week program trains participants in the basic skills they need to start a construction career such as OSHA and construction math while also offering the soft skills needed to get a job such as interviewing and resume writing. Woven throughout the classroom time are opportunities to visit and experience DC area union apprenticeship programs to give students a sense of the different trades available to them. To help students overcome the barriers to full time employment that are endemic in the poorest neighborhoods of the city, Building Futures offers wrap around social services to insure students are ready to go to work at the end of the six weeks.

If students are interested in a particular trade, the program helps them understand and navigate the apprenticeship application process and facilitates them entering the trade. For students that are not quite ready to commit to a trade, the program works with employers to place students in high wage jobs. Even after graduation and placement, students can always come back to the program for job placement assistance.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

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The Working Catholic: Christmas Shopping
by Bill Droel

Will your shopping for gifts this holy season include buying apparel? Be warned: It will be difficult to find clean clothes. Some are hopelessly stained with child labor, even slavery. Most have flaws like sweatshop wages, dangerous working conditions, wage theft, harassment and more.

In recent years some consumers have shown interest in healthier food. The slow food movement has even reached the menus within the biggest fast food chains. Now a slow fashion movement is budding. For example, you can purchase clean jeans from Blue Delta in Oxford, Mississippi. There is an Ivy League educated woman in Tennessee who is doing well growing and selling indigo domestically. About 700 cotton farms in South Carolina practice re-shoring; that is, growing stateside and supplying manufacturers here. Even a few well-known apparel brands are gradually turning away from sweatshops.
It is likely too late to get into slow fashion purchasing before Wednesday, December 25, 2019. However, Advent (also called the Journey Outward) is an appropriate time for solid reading on the topic of clothing.

In Beaten Down, Worked Up (Alfred Knopf, 2019) Steven Greenhouse gives two thorough chapters to the history of U.S. apparel manufacturing.
In the early 1900s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a premier manufacturer of affordable women’s blouses. It occupied the top three floors of New York City’s Asch Building (now known as Brown Building and owned by N.Y. University). In November 1909 the women there and in other factories staged a strike. Aided by Women’s Trade Union League and by International Ladies Garment Worker Union and for a time by a few wealthy women called Mink Coat Brigade, the Triangle workers held out for over two months. Their demands were modest: Managers must stop “yelling at them, threatening them or harassing them” plus a change in the pay system–from a set amount per day, no matter the number of hours to an hourly wage. When they settled, the Triangle workers got a small raise and a 52-hour week. They did not get the first goal of every worker action: sole and exclusive bargaining rights. Nor was workplace safety part of the outcome.
Beaten Down, Worked Up profiles Clara Lemlich Shavelson (1886-1982). She was 23-years old in those last weeks of 1909. She emerged as a leader of the garment workers. At a crowded union meeting held in Cooper Union she pushed her way to the front and shouted: “I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms. I move that we go on a general strike.” Her activism continued through her life. She pioneered the tactic of consumer boycott and started tenants’ groups in her neighborhood. In her 80s Lemlich Shavelson lived in a senior facility. Sure enough, she organized the nurses and aides. With these working conditions “you’d be crazy not to join a union,” she told the workers.
Beaten Down, Worked Up goes on to detail a devastating fire at Triangle Company that occurred in March 1911. After just 18 minutes, 144 people were dead.
Before 1900, it might be noted, there was no such thing as fashion in our country; except among the elites in Virginia and elsewhere along the Atlantic coast who took cues from Europe. There was no “off the rack” shopping for working women and men (only standard issue uniforms or homemade clothes). Only with mass production of apparel and other products in the 20th century could working-class people have an interest in and be able to afford fashion. The Triangle Company, like many other shops, cut and assembled stylish shirts; the beginning of what today is called fast fashion. Of course, the main ingredient in the early 1900s as with nearly all garments today was cheap labor. An exploitative wage system was and is justified.
Beaten Down, Worked Up then profiles a witness to the Triangle Company tragedy: Frances Perkins (1880-1965), an Episcopalian. She was in a nearby café, on break from her position with National Consumers League (www.nclnet.org). Her friend was Florence Kelley (1859-1932), a Quaker and the first general secretary of Consumers League.
If you have ever drawn overtime pay, ever collected an unemployment check, ever benefited from Social Security, ever been thankful for safety features at your job site, it is because of the tireless efforts of Perkins. After her time with the Consumers League, she worked for New York State and then became the first woman cabinet member, serving through all of President Franklin Roosevelt’s terms. She was compelled to improve conditions for working families by the imprint of the horrible Triangle Company tragedy.

How is it that all our clothes come from Asia or Latin America? Might President Donald Trump revive apparel manufacturing in the U.S.? Is there something we can do about dirty clothing even during these short days before Christmas? To be continued with information drawn from Fashionapolis by Dana Thomas (Penguin, 2019).

Droel edits a print newsletter of faith and work for National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).

Join the Catholic Labor Network at the USCCB Catholic Social Ministry Gathering!

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January 25-28, 2020

Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington DC 

Every year, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops invites Catholic social ministry leaders and social justice activists from across the country to Washington DC for several days of fellowship, learning, prayer, and activism – and the Catholic Labor Network, as a partner in the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, holds its annual meeting and luncheon. I hope you will join us for one or both of these events in January 2020 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington DC!

The Catholic Labor Network annual meeting opens at 8am on Saturday, January 25. In the morning, we’ll hear Catholic labor leaders, clergy and lay social justice activists share how their faith has informed their witness for the working poor and struggles to change society. Our special guest speakers will include USCCB Labor Policy Advisor Michael O’Rourke; staff from Catholic Charities and the United Food and Commercial Workers who responded to this year’s ICE raids at Mississippi meatpacking plants; airline food service workers who have organized with the union UNITE HERE, and are campaigning for living wage jobs with health care coverage; and many more. We will also provide updates on the Church-Labor Partnership Project, a Catholic Labor Network effort supported by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, fostering partnerships between Church and labor organizations to promote social justice.

CSMG 2020 will open that afternoon and continue through Tuesday, January 28. This year’s theme is Bearing Witness: Life and Justice for All. Speakers and workshops will cover major topics in Catholic Social Teaching, from global peace to environmental protection to economic justice – including a workshop hosted by CCHD and the Catholic Labor Network, Church and Unions Partner to Seek Justice for All.

To register for either or both of these important events, CLICK HERE

Catholic Labor Network Statement on the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act

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In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued the Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum, endorsing the right of workers to organize in unions to secure just wages under modern economic conditions. Citing the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, he noted that “Two are better than one: They get a good wage for their toil…. Where one alone may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.” Indeed, Leo did not simply endorse the right to form unions, but “desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient [49-50].” This teaching has remained consistent to the present day, as reaffirmed by Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate when he said that “The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must be honoured today even more than in the past [25].”

Sadly, in the United States we have witnessed the opposite. In the 1950s, more than one third of American workers enjoyed the protections and opportunities of union members: protection from arbitrary treatment in the workplace, and the opportunity to negotiate their wages and working conditions through collective bargaining. What union workers won helped lift the dignity and standards of all workers, reducing inequality and promoting a more humane economy.

Today only about one in ten workers belong to labor unions, and when workers try to organize and bargain collectively they often face retaliation or stonewalling by hostile employers. The erosion of union representation in the face of this opposition has in turn lowered standards for all workers, contributing to surging inequality.

The PRO Act proposes to deter – and where necessary, punish – employers that violate workers’ rights to prevent them from organizing. It provides for arbitration when a union and an employer are unable to agree on a first contract. It would permit unions to negotiate “fair share” fees when they incur costs for representing workers who do not belong to the union.

The Catholic Labor Network believes that the PRO Act is consistent with “The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights.” These reforms promise to make labor unions “more numerous and more efficient.” Consequently, the Catholic Labor Network endorses passage of the PRO Act.

Strikes

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The Working Catholic: Strikes
by Bill Droel

Strikes are in the news: auto workers, janitors, teachers, hotel workers and more. Catholicism has a well-developed doctrine on labor relations that includes moral considerations regarding strikes. Most Catholics, I suspect, know nothing about this doctrine. Some who know about it don’t accept it.

Catholicism says that a wholesome, holy society must have bargaining associations for workers. This teaching is part of the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity. It also fits with Catholicism’s experience of responsible freedom—something lacking in societies without independent worker associations and other countervailing forces. Totalitarianisms, on one hand, squash unions. Libertarian capitalism with its equation of freedom with extreme individualism likewise rejects unions and other mediating structures. A healthy society by contrast encourages workers’ groups and other associations.
Catholicism does not say that every workplace must have a union. It does not say that this or that union is a good fit for this or that workplace. It does, however, assert that the workers make the choice for or against a union without the maternal or paternal meddling of management. In support of this doctrine Catholicism says that bona fide workers’ groups are entitled to job actions. Catholicism does not vouch for the wisdom of any one job action. That’s a prudential matter for the workers.

A strike is morally OK with some conditions. It must be a just strike. That is, the workers have previously exercised good faith in expressing their position. The issues are serious enough. No violence can occur, though strikers can be loud and can temporarily assert extreme demands. During a strike the union must have a negotiating posture. So too, says Catholicism, must management. This is why a lock out is immoral.
Finally, the strikers are not allowed to put customers, patients, students, neighbors and the like in danger. This is why a wholesale strike by police officers is immoral. For the same reason a nurses’ strike is morally dicey. It could be acceptable, only if provisions for patient care are taken and if it is of short duration.
In keeping with these criteria Catholicism says that no Catholic is allowed to cross a legitimate picket line. No Catholic, meaning suppliers, customers and managers. (If this stricture were observed, all strikes would be settled quickly. After all, about 25% of all executives are Catholic.)
Cardinal John O’Connor (1920-2000) of New York was schooled in labor doctrine from his childhood. One time a major Catholic entity scheduled its high-priced ticket fundraiser at an elite country club. Days before the event the club’s staff went on strike. O’Connor announced that his religion prohibited him from attending the event and mentioned that the prohibition should apply to any Catholic. The event was cancelled, even though the entity really needed this fundraiser.
From the doctrine pertaining to strikes it logically follows that the use of permanent replacement workers is a contradiction in terms. O’Connor testified to our U.S. Congress on this point.

Finally, the record must state that Catholic institutions sometimes flaunt our faith and engage in union busting. That their trustees and managers are able to get away with their behavior, provides proof as to why workers need their own associations, free from maternalism or paternalism. A list of Catholic institutions that harmoniously deal with a union is found on this Catholic Labor Network website.

Droel is an author of Catholic Institutions and Labor Unions (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $1)