Does the Catholic Church have a responsibility to the American worker?

Bishops and the assault on unions

By Richard McBrien
National Catholic Reporter

One of the major elements of Catholic social teaching, ever since 1891 and the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of New Realities”), has been support of workers to form labor unions.

That right has been endorsed most recently by the current pope, Benedict XVI, in his own 2009 encyclical Caritas in veritate (“Love in truth”). In that document, Pope Benedict-spoke of 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 associations or unions “must therefore be honored 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]

However, that fundamental right of workers to bargain collectively with their employers has been under direct attack by the newly elected Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, and various other states.

We tend to forget that because of the persistent efforts of labor unions, we can now take for granted the 8-hour work day, the 40-hour work week, weekends off, paid vacations, child labor laws, and so many other benefits to the general public, whether union members or not.

And yet our bishops are, for the most part, silent on this greatest threat to Catholic social doctrine since the 1930s. In fact, they are, for the most part, sitting on their hands.

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