Can a Catholic Legitimately Oppose Unions?

Teacher Union density map

But my relative silence on political issues was broken with force on Saturday when I wrote “Confessions of a Catholic Teacher in a Public School.” To my surprise, the coverage of this piece broader than anything I have written to date. The number of comments I received (some public and some private) went through the proverbial roof, and I found myself, perhaps intentionally, perhaps by providence, thrust into the public square.

It all begs the question, though: Does the Catholic Church support unions? As it turns out, this is a complicated issue that is simply impossible to answer without agreeing on what we mean by a union. The Catholic Church unambiguously supports the rights and the need of man to form associations, associations that support the dignity of the human person and, via that prior dignity of the person, the dignity of the worker. A read through the array of social encyclicals will show that the Church is often and necessarily vague in her descriptions of “unions” and “association” and she always ties both to an authentic vision of the human person and human relationships.

The stark reality is that many of the unions today (here I will limit myself to the National Teacher Association and its affiliates and not presume to speak on behalf of other associations) are not the unions of which Pope Leo XIII spoke and defended at the turn of the century. If we are speaking of the right of workers to form associations so that they can combat inhumane working conditions, be they wages, hours, or unhealthy environments, then we enthusiastically support their right to organize. This is a matter of human dignity, and the Church, who always situates social teaching in the context of such dignity, will wholeheartedly give her blessing to the associations of men dedicated to combating these injustices. This is a far cry from today’s NEA. Once the National Teacher Association and its affiliates gave up on human dignity in its most basic form, they lost the right to claim Catholic social teaching as a foundation for their existence.

Read the rest at: Roma locuta est

Fantastic research!