Does the Pope Care About Workers' Rights?

[Omaha Steve]

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

article | posted April 14, 2008 (web only)

Angela Bonavoglia

Catholic education will be front and center this week when Benedict XVI makes his first papal visit to America. On April 17, at Catholic University in Washington, DC, he will address more than 400 college, university, elementary and secondary school leaders. His subject will be the importance of Catholic education, and he'll probably argue for strict adherence to the usual orthodox Church teachings--a call for academics to behave and for bishops to insure that they do.

What Benedict is unlikely to address is the failure of many in the church hierarchy to abide by another social teaching that is far more pertinent to Catholic education right now: workers' rights. The workers in question are beleaguered Catholic elementary and high school teachers around the country.

Benedict may soon come face to face with their plight if members of the Lay Faculty Association, one of New York City's two teachers' unions, goes on strike as planned on the eve of his arrival. These Catholic school teachers have been working for eight months without a contract and have failed to settle with the Archdiocese.

To the casual observer, this strike makes it seem like Catholic school teachers are secure in their right to fight for just wages and working conditions. Yet in reality, they have legal protection for union activities only in a handful of states, thanks to the obstructionist tactics of Catholic bishops.

Despite literally centuries of Catholic social teaching promoting the right of workers to organize, Church authorities have fought Catholic teachers' organizing efforts since the 1970s, when they blocked union elections in Philadelphia and refused to accept the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as a bargaining agent for teachers in Chicago.

Another blow for organizing came in 1979 when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Chicago Archdiocese, deciding that Catholic school teachers did not have the right to organize under the NLRB. The court ruled not on the constitutionality of such representation but on a technicality--that the 1935 National Labor Relations Act did not specifically include Catholic school teachers. That's not surprising, since nearly all teachers in 1935 were nuns or religious brothers, not lay people who had to earn a living.

FULL story at link.

[Fed_Up_Grammy]

1. No. He doesn't care about women's rights or gay rights either.