Labor Day, workers' rights, and faith

This is a reflection I wrote for a Labor Day Mass this weekend. As it draws to a close, hope you're all feeling replete and re-emergized for what you do.

If you gave much thought to the theory behind Labor Day this year, you might have noted how funny it is that to honor workers, we take a day off from work. It’s also a good time to give thanks to God for the work we do have, which, if we’re lucky, engages us, brings us out into the community, and lets us care for ourselves and our families. Labor Day can be a time to think about how we may honor God in the work we do, even if we don’t think it’s particularly interesting or important, by doing our jobs with gratitude and love. We honor work in personal ways when we realize that God is present in everything we do. But Catholic tradition calls us also to honor workers in public and practical ways, by promoting the rights of workers to speak out together when workplaces become unjust. This is why Pope John Paul II called unions an “indispensable element of social life.” There is no dignity at work without a voice at work, and dignity at work, the Church teaches, is a fundamental right of God’s human creation.

Our readings today [Sunday] give us just a taste of the Biblical basis for the Church’s support of worker’s rights. The first reading calls us to speak out against wrongdoing, and the second reminds us that only love is the fulfillment of the law. In the Gospel, Jesus gives us a very practical model for speaking out for justice with love. When workers today unite to defend their dignity, they often follow this pattern. If someone is being treated unjustly at work, she may talk to her supervisor alone. If nothing changes, she will come with a group of colleagues who share her concerns and who desire to see change happen. If your adversary still doesn’t listen, Jesus says, you should take the problem to the church, in other words, to the community of people who want to see justice done for you. Only after repeated calls for dialogue and fairness have been ignored will a union take the problem to the media, purchasers of products, and to the government to increase the pressure to give workers a fair hearing.

Dignity in the workplace is far more than a spiritual notion: it is literally a matter of life and death. When employers fail to see the humanity of their employees, they make choices that are dangerous to their employees and to their clients. In California this year, five fruit pickers have died from heatstroke. They did not take the breaks they were entitled to because they would be fired if they did not make quota. Here in Chicago, nurses say they must endanger their patients because hospitals won’t pay for enough nurses to work a shift. How terrifying to know a life could be lost because your employer is too cheap to let you do your job well. This is why the Church calls on us all to hold employers accountable: without the call to justice from the community, it is far too easy for employers to make the wrong choice.

In workplaces today, fewer employees are being asked to do more work than ever before. In the 1930s, unions fought for a 40-hour workweek. Those workers believed that time for family, church and community is necessary to the dignity of an employee. When someone has to work two jobs to support her family, or because a workplace won’t give her the full hours she needs for health benefits, that worker’s dignity is being stripped away.

Respect for workers affects more than just what happens at work. More than 45 million Americans are without health insurance, putting them one illness away from potential bankruptcy or loss of a home. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty, and a third of these are children. According to the Chicago Tribune, here in the Midwest it can be so hard to find a decently paying job that you have people simply “dropping out” of the labor force, preferring to struggle along on government handouts rather than work jobs that keep their heads firmly below water. This hurts the taxpayers, it hurts the economy of the Midwest, and it hurts those individual workers most of all.

Who has the responsibility for this problem? Catholic social teaching is clear on two things. The market is not the enemy, but neither must it be allowed to make moral decisions. How much a worker makes, whether a waitress should be able to afford health insurance, whether a laborer’s kids can go to college—these are moral decisions that should be made by moral beings, not by a shifting economy. The government, the Church teaches, must promote the dignity and humanity of workers. The fact that unions and charities exist to help workers and the poor does not excuse the government and employers from ethical behavior towards workers.

So now you know the teaching. What’s this have to do with you and me? Can’t we just say a prayer of thanks for our jobs and move on to the picnic? No, because what the bishops teach, Catholics accomplish; we are the Church’s hands and feet. As citizens, consumers, employees and employers, we make decisions every day that affect the lives workers will have in the years to come.

You have the power to join boycotts. You have the power to write to a company that fights against a union and to say “As a Catholic, I think this is wrong.” If you’re an employer, you have the responsibility to ensure that your employees have the dignity that comes from a voice at work and a salary dictated by the needs of human dignity, not by the lowest possibilities forced by the market. We all have power to demand change of our government, to demand great things of our own charity, and to demand better practices from the companies who employ American workers. A change is going to come, but it won’t come for free. And it won’t come without us being an insistent witness, with love, to the world we need to see.

As I’ve been speaking to you about unions today, the odds are that you felt more indifferent than your parents or grandparents might have. I know I’ve had people say to me, “Back when we had child labor, back before there were laws about equal hiring, workers needed unions then, but now it’s different.” Other people have heard stories about bad union leaders or are disappointed with the way the labor movement’s going. As we come to follow the Pope’s lead in support for unions, these concerns deserve to be addressed.

Sometimes it’s hard to see how an older system fits into a newer world. When we see that globalization helps us buy affordable things, or we read a story about someone who might be taking advantage of welfare, it’s easy to think “Well, the world is changing,” and to forget about the principles that unions stand for. They are principles that were very dear to John Paul II. The notion of valuing the dignity of every worker through safe jobs that can provide for a family. The core belief that every person has a responsibility to call broken systems to account. Whether it’s the government forgetting about the poor, companies abusing the human dignity of their workers, or consumers failing to use their power to demand justice, we need only look to today’s Scripture to hear our call to witness—in personal encounters or in large groups—witness with love to the change we know must come.

After all, as Catholics, we know a thing or two about fitting an older system into a newer world. The values taught by our ancient faith can build a world where work is done with dignity for the glory of God.