In Honor of Labor and Workers’ Unionism

Thank you very much, dear parishioners, for your generosity and sense of solidarity with the people of Japan, in particular with the people of the city of Sendai and those areas affected by the earthquake, the tsunami and now by the threat of nuclear leakage. We now know that Sendai is a sister city of Riverside, a relationship that is reputedly the oldest in US history. Our Sunday second collection was a little bit more than $10,000.00. Perhaps, donations are still coming.

These days, we hear of campaigns by government elected officials with industrial and business backers to curb public sector unionizing and deny workers’ rights for collective bargaining agreement among government employees. What seems to be at the surface a purely economic and financial issue has actually a hidden political partisan motivation: a challenge to the fundamental legal and political basis of labor unionizing in the public sector or in government bureaucracy.

The Church elevates the issue on the moral plain. On the level of Justice and Charity, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, Catholics, thus: Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labor unions…The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine…for the promotion of workers’ association that can defend their rights must therefore be honored even more today than in the past.” John Paul II in 1981 says: “ a union remains a constructive factor of social order and solidarity, and it is impossible to ignore it.”

 Workers’ rights and labor unionism are deeply valued in the teachings and life- tradition of the Catholic Church. The articulation of this biblical value and gospel imperative is highlighted in the Social Doctrines of the Catholic Church, beginning with Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII. Pope Leo XIII said: “workmen’s association is the most important of all institutions and organizations which afford opportune assistance to those in need…they (workmen’s association) should multiply and become more effective”. Vatican II teaching again says: “Among the basic rights of the human person must be counted the right of freely founding labor unions. These unions should be truly able to represent the workers and to contribute to the proper management of economic life. Another such right is that of taking part freely in the activity of these unions without fear of reprisal” (The Church in the Modern World, 68).

The US Catholic Bishops affirmed this tradition of the Church’s Social Teaching. In its document “Economic Justice for All (1986), they said: The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions…No one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself.”

With this teaching, aren’t we glad we are Catholics and disciples of Jesus? – Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC