NATIONAL CATHOLIC REVIEW: Which Side Are We On?

[Omaha Steve]

http://americamagazine.org/issue/which-side-are-we

January 19-26, 2015 Issue Clayton Sinyai

Catholic teachers and the right to unionize


LABOR LESSON. Rae O’Hair, left, a Duquesne University alumna, and her friend Daniele Orosz rally for unionizing adjunct faculty in December 2013.

tholic social teaching on the rights of workers to organize is clear and consistent. “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,” writes Pope Benedict XVI in the encyclical “Charity in Truth,” “must therefore be honored today even more than in the past.”

What does this teaching imply for Catholic institutions? After all, perhaps one million American workers are employed by them, from hospitals and nursing homes to parish offices and parochial schools. In their 1986 pastoral letter “Economic Justice for All,” the U.S. bishops connected the dots. “All the moral principles that govern the just operation of any economic endeavor apply to the church and its agencies and institutions; indeed the church should be exemplary,” the bishops wrote. “All church institutions must also fully recognize the rights of employees to organize and bargain collectively with the institution through whatever association or organization they freely choose.”

In Pittsburgh, two groups of Catholic educators have formed workers’ associations; they have received sharply different responses from their employers. The teachers in Pittsburgh’s Catholic high schools—and many Catholic elementary schools—have established a respectful and mutually rewarding system of collective bargaining. Meanwhile, Duquesne University and its adjunct faculty are entering litigation with university administrators citing their religious identity as a reason for rejecting collective bargaining rather than adopting it.

Duquesne has attracted more headlines. In the past few years, adjunct instructors at dozens of universities—public and private, Catholic and secular—have sought to organize and thus improve their conditions of work. Yesterday’s “adjunct faculty” were mostly working professionals who taught a course now and then in their free time, earning a small stipend. Tenured professors carried the bulk of the teaching responsibilities and earned a generous salary and benefits.

FULL story at link.