Does the Pope Care about Worker’s Rights?

By Beth Myers, Executive Director of STITCH

Around Washington, D.C. this week, it’s Pope-mania with Pope Benedict XIV visiting the United States for the first time. It is an interesting time to think about the Catholic Church and worker’s rights. While the Catholic Worker movement is still going strong around the globe, does the Catholic Church still publicly take as strong of a stand in support of unions as they once did? And if they act badly towards their own workers are they putting their moral authority on this issue on the line?

No Unions for School Teachers

This week the Nation Magazine wrote about the struggle and anti-union activity that teachers in Catholic schools face when trying to organize unions in their schools. It’s a sad statement that one of the strongest supporters of unionism and worker’s rights is now trying to break the unions using company unions or just flat out not negotiating with them. Teacher’s unions are responsible for making sure that women (the majority of the members are women) are able to pass on their passion for knowledge and still make a living wage.

Read this passage from the article:

However, in recent years in other parts of the country, Catholic bishops have been busting longstanding Catholic school teachers' unions and stripping teachers of their right to unionize. In 2004, Archbishop Sean O'Malley ended thirty-six years of the Boston Archdiocese's negotiation of a single contract with the high schools by decentralizing the system and then refusing to recognize the union any longer.

Mary Chubb, a veteran Catholic school teacher, spent nearly ten years trying to gain recognition for elementary school teachers in St. Louis, Missouri.  Bishop Raymond Burke summarily killed that movement in 2004 by issuing an unequivocal written decree stating that, "Neither the Archdiocese nor individual parishes will recognize or bargain collectively with any organization as a representative of the teachers."

You can read the full article here:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080428/bonavoglia

First Sermon Focused on Worker’s Rights

Despite the behavior in regards to school teachers and unions, Pope Benedict did use his first Sunday sermon as the newly ordained Pope to stress the importance of dignity, solidarity, and respect for workers.

Here’s the excerpt from a story from the Catholic News Service: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0502694.htm

Speaking to the crowd, which included thousands of members of Italy's Association of Christian Workers, Pope Benedict said believers must promote "Christian fraternity ... in the workplace and in social life so that solidarity, justice and peace may be pillars on which to build the unity of the Christian family."

Pope Benedict recalled that Pope Pius XII had created the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker in order "to stress the importance of work and of the presence of Christ and the church in the labor world."

"It is necessary to pay witness also in today's society to the 'Gospel of work,' which John Paul II spoke of in his encyclical 'Laborem Exercens,'" Pope Benedict said.

"I hope that work will not be lacking, especially for young people, and that working conditions will respect always the dignity of the human person," the pope said.

Hope for a powerful message of support for Unions

Even with the controversial action towards workers in Catholic Schools, let’s hope that the Pope maintains the long, Catholic tradition of being supportive of workers and unions as he makes speeches and travels around the United States. Let’s also hope that the church’s actions towards teachers change before that message no longer seems legitimate.

Comments

[Justin Lam]

I think it's a bit erroneous to connect Catholic teachers' ability to unionize with whether the pope cares about workers' rights or not. Given the way the Catholic church works and the fact that it has different organization (and different cultural norms) in each country, I think it would be more accurate to ask whether the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (www.usccb.org) should be addressing this issue.

I also think that this is a unique situation because these teachers are part of a private education system. That's not to say that they shouldn't be able to collectively bargain for wages - as someone who went to Catholic schools for elementary, middle, and high school, I'll be the first to attest that the wages of parochial school teachers aren't that great.

But, that aside, I think it has to be specific that these are parish teachers and/or teachers of diocesan schools you're talking about. In any Catholic diocese, there are also a myriad of schools run by individual orders, and it should be up to the individual teachers in schools not part of the diocesan systems to negotiate with their administrations in those instances because they are often so specialized and because those schools are entities separate from dioceses.