EXCERPT:
The current standoff between Wisconsin’s governor, his Democratic legislators, the protesters in and around the state house, and his own populist supporters, raises a multiplicity of issues about the place of labor unions in American Life. Over the last 50 years, the percentage of unionized American workers in private industry has declined while, at the same time, the percentage of unionized public workers has increased. This reflects both the widening of legal protections for unions (which were once widely banned from the public sector) and a simultaneous shrinkage of unions’ political power in corporate America.
In the current fight, seen as a bellweather for many other states, what is a stake is the future of those legal protections.
As the standoff continued, it became clear that the question of reducing workplace benefits for state employees was really camouflage for the deeper challenge to collective bargaining itself. By now, the unions have agreed to concede the economic provisions of the proposed legislation, but object to its legal consequences in restricting their ability to negotiate future contracts.
And here we approach an issue which, for American Catholics, should not be about liberal vs. conservative or Democratic vs. Republican; it should be about the basic matter of Catholic identity. For it is now more than a century that the Catholic Church has been on record supporting the notion that trade unionism, and the collective bargaining that goes with it, are basic human rights which, in modern capitalist societies, are often the only protection workers have against corporate power.
As complex and subtle as the Wisconsin case may be, it would be sad if Catholics lost sight of the fundamental commitment to unionism and collective bargaining which, as a matter of principle, is rooted in our own Christian faith.
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