The Missing Theme - Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers

"Workers also have responsibilities - to provide a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, to treat employers and co-workers with respect, and to carry out their work in ways that contribute to the common good." Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (52)

It is one of the Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching. It was the principal subject of Rerum Novarum, the first of the great papal encyclicals on social justice. Writing in 1893, Pope Leo XIII addressed the great social issue of his day, the right of workers to organize. The industrial revolution was still young, the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels were all the rage, and the Russian Revolution was just around the corner.

But in 2011, in their quadrennial call for political responsibility in advance of the US presidential election, American bishops barely mentioned the rights and responsibilities of organized labor. It's a shame. The topic may not carry the drama or the historic impact it did in 1893 but it is again being called into question, most notably in the Wisconsin recall election for Gov. Scott Walker.

It's time the bishops took another look. The questions aren't just ideological, they are moral and practical. What happens when employees abuse their rights and ignore their responsibilities? More than one company has gone out of business because rising labor costs made them uncompetitive. Who benefits from that? Do public employees have the same rights as those in the private sector? That was the question in Wisconsin. What about off-shoring? Do the benefits to workers in underdeveloped countries outweigh the costs to those who lose their jobs? These are major questions of justice in a world that is changing rapidly. Shouldn't the church have more to say?

Union membership has been in decline in the US for as long as I can remember, in no small measure through the unions' own doing. When I was in school I subscribed to the New York Herald Tribune and later the New York Journal American. By 1966 they were both in financial trouble and tried to lower costs by combining operating facilities with two other newspapers. Unions struck to block the merger and within a few years all four newspapers failed.

When airline deregulation came in 1978 proud Eastern Airlines found itself beset with no-frills competition. When they tried to respond their machinists union balked and partly as a result of the ensuing strike the airline declared bankruptcy in 1989. Two years later they sold all their assets to make partial payments to lenders. Thousands lost their jobs.

Last year organized labor tried and failed to eliminate the secret ballot in union votes, a brazen effort to put themselves in position to intimidate employees. Their allies at the NLRB also tried and failed to block the opening of a major new Boeing assembly plant in South Carolina, because South Carolina is a right-to-work state.

The current economic slowdown has made it obvious in a wave of cities and states across the country that negotiated salaries and benefits for public employees are not sustainable. Promised pensions will have to be cut. It has become clear that unions have not been working for the common good. They have not even working for their own best interest.

The United States needs a strong organized labor sector and we are losing it quickly. To turn that around will require some serious reforms. That in turn will require a cooperative spirit among management, labor, and government, something popes since Leo XIII have been calling for but has been largely absent. The USCCB could and should be a temperate voice in rebuilding some broken relationships.