Why Unions at Good Companies? The Working Catholic by Bill Droel

“Why did the new, worker friendly workplaces prove unable to keep their employees happy enough not to have to pay union dues?” So asks a Chicago Tribune editorial (4/10/24). The editors have in mind Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, the camping equipment retailer REI plus several museums and theatres here in Chicago and elsewhere. After all, Trader Joe’s has a 7% annual pay increase, a 401K, a health insurance option, employee discount on groceries and more, the Tribune informs us. 

Many executives and managers plus the Tribune editors have a mistaken premise. Employees who desire a union are not entirely motivated by discontent, particularly regarding their wage. The desire for participation is an increasingly important factor in union activity among nurses, tech engineers, hotel staff, autoworkers and more. These employees organize in part to keep their good company good. 

Then too perhaps the Tribune and others are mistaken that these companies really are progressive. The companies in question undermine their image once the word union enters their domain. The noble employers quickly reveal another side. They retaliate. They threaten to close a store or an entire plant. They harass outspoken employees. They make side-deals with passive employees. They begin legal action against employees who promote their cause with t-shirts and tote bags that display the company name or logo. Such employers conclusively reveal their true character when they retain a union-busting firm. They continue their hostility by avoiding conversations and negotiations with employees.

Paternalism is not respectful. Grand mission statements are hollow without genuine involvement of all the workers. 

Catholic labor relations doctrine can help. It states that a decision for or against a union belongs to the employees without paternal or maternal interference from their employer.  Every honest company, no matter the circumstances, should share information with its workers through regular conversations, attractive pamphlets and newsletters plus supplying understandable summaries of the data given to investors. But a union vote is to be without harassment.

Catholic doctrine does not say that any one or another company must have a union. Nor does Catholic doctrine endorse this union for this company. Again, the choice belongs to the employees. 

Catholic doctrine does say that a healthy society has the collective participation of workers in some form. Democratic unions are a normal way to secure participation. Catholic doctrine instructs employers and employees to behave ethically. Retaining a union-busting firm violates Catholic doctrine and is objectively sinful. Instead, employers are advised to seek reputable assistance in their labor relations. Those employers who bargain tough are well within bounds.

For more on this topic, obtain St. John Paul II’s Gospel of Work (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $8)

Psalm 130: De Profundis

 

Out of the depths I call to you, Lord;

Lord, hear my cry!

Thousands of people were killed in Gaza with ordnance paid for by the U.S. 

Gangs in Haiti are armed and powerful.

May your ears be attentive

To my cry for mercy.

   Climate change immediately affects the globe.

If you, Lord, mark our sins,

Lord, who can stand?

Speaking of ‘following the money,’ Opus Dei activist Leonardo Leo, who handpicked our six far-right supreme court judges who dismantled Roe V Wade, is now a billionaire himself. 

(Daily Meditation by Matthew Fox, May 18, 2024)

But with you is forgiveness

And so you are revered.

        Pope Francis says that indifference is a world-wide disease.

Anti-War Protests Seen as Anti-Semitic

 

Religion has ingrained anti-Semitism into the public psyche.  Anti-Semitism is credible as an excuse for the protests by government officials.  Both Jewish and Muslim people are considered Semitic. 

For example, anti-Jewish hatred is found in the Christian version of the Bible, especially some passages read during Holy Week.  Jesus of Nazareth is said to be killed by the Jews. 

Pilate washes his hands.  The blame is on the Jews.

At the end of the famous ‘Camino to Santiago de Compostela,’ pilgrims enter the Cathedral and are faced with the statue of the legendary Santiago Matamoros, Saint James, slayer of Muslims. 

Santiago Matamoros, Saint James, the slayer of the Moors.

Santiago is seated on a horse carrying a sword.  The legend surfaced in the beginning of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain.(9^th Century) 

Santiago Matamoros was the patron of the Fascist General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. 

The anti-war movement rejects the horror of the massacre of thousands of people in Gaza.  Let’s look at a quote from a Jewish writer who said, ‘Love your Enemies?’ (Matthew 5:43-45) This quote is from the Bible, the ‘Book’ that all three Abrahamic religions respect.  Power politics has no reference to such a statement.  This ancient saying is swept out of conscienceness by the political thrust for power. 

The Working Catholic: Social Doctrine Part 16 by Bill Droel

 

 

It was news when this past April employees at a Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga, TN voted overwhelmingly to join United Auto Workers (www.uawregion8.net). The vote is noteworthy because the South is generally not receptive to unions. It is not only noteworthy in the present. We may “someday look back at the Chattanooga vote as a milestone on the road back to the more or less middle-class society” in the U.S., writes Paul Krugman in NY Times (4/26/24). 

The vote’s back story is also intriguing. It has the potential to advance Catholic social thought in our country, specifically the Catholic principle of economic participation and its extension, the industry council plan. In older Catholic textbooks this is called solidarism. In Germany it is co-determinism or works council. In France it is enterprise committees; in Belgium it’s delegates for personnel; and it is joint consultative committee in England.

In his 1937 encyclical, Of a Divine Redeemer, Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) wrote about the industrial council plan. Several Catholics in the U.S. promoted the idea during and after World War II. Its basics are explained in Ed Marciniak’s City and Church by Chuck Shanabruch (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $20). A council meets regularly to discuss industry products and planning. Membership includes executives, employees, middle-managers, government officials, and maybe consumers. Some topics can be off-limits, like wages. The plan does not supersede a union. In fact, its intention is to focus collective bargaining. The plan does not encourage collusion among competitor companies, including price fixing. In fact, the plan’s goal of cooperation enhances production within democratic competition. The industry council solicits and implements ideas from all the participants in a company or an industry. Its outcome lessens the need for government meddling.

As the industry council plan spreads, Marciniak said, neo-liberal industrialism or post-industrialism will be tempered. “Society has lost its organic character,” Marciniak wrote in 1954. Society “is gradually being torn apart by class and racial conflict.” The industry council plan, he emphasized, “is not benevolent paternalism, but rather a real partnership in which working [people] will become co-responsible with management in solving the economic problems of industry.”

Please note: The industry council plan does not hang on the cloths line by itself. It is one contribution to multiple reforms that take shape gradually. Second, the plan is not of, by and for Catholics. There is no need to ever invoke Pius XI or Marciniak. The council’s meetings do not require an opening prayer.

Back to Tennessee. VW, headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany, participates in a works council. VW wanted to implement that model in its Chattanooga plant. However, U.S. labor law seems to require a union before there can be a works council. In 2011 some workers in Chattanooga began a union drive at VW. They lost a vote in February 2014. Reasons for the defeat included the oddity that VW’s Tennessee employees at that time were paid a few cents more than Northern workers represented by UAW. Additionally, some VW employees in Chattanooga lacked confidence in the UAW executives up in Detroit. Along came Shawn Fain, who in March 2023 won a reform campaign to be UAW president. He then led a rolling strike simultaneously at GM, Ford and Stellantis. By October 2023 a framework for a favorable contract was in place.

The success of the UAW’s strike in 2023 and more specifically its 2024 success in Tennessee raise the possibility of a works council in the U.S. Stay tuned.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a printed newsletter on faith and work.