Posted by David Kopel:
The Religious Left at Work: God Hates Secret Ballots:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_04_05-2009_04_11.shtml#1239136771
I've just received seen an e-mail from the AFL-CIO, sent on behalf of
[1]Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice. The e-mail urges that "a
scholar who supports Catholic social doctrine and its teachings on
workers rights", to sign an on-line petition for the (misnamed)
Employee Free Choice Act.
The e-mail says that EFCA may come up for a Senate vote before the
Memorial Day recess. It also notes that "The Catholic weekly, America
magazine, called EFCA the most important legislation in the past 72
years." [2]America, which is run by the Jesuits, has long been very
far to the left of most of the Catholic press in the United States,
and of American Catholics. The right of workers to unionize is
well-established in Catholic teaching. For example, in the 1891
encyclical [3]Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII stated:
The most important of all [civic organizations] are workingmen's
unions, for these virtually include all the rest. History attests
what excellent results were brought about by the artificers' guilds
of olden times. They were the means of affording not only many
advantages to the workmen, but in no small degree of promoting the
advancement of art, as numerous monuments remain to bear witness.
Such unions should be suited to the requirements of this our age -
an age of wider education, of different habits, and of far more
numerous requirements in daily life. It is gratifying to know that
there are actually in existence not a few associations of this
nature, consisting either of workmen alone, or of workmen and
employers together, but it were greatly to be desired that they
should become more numerous and more efficient. We have spoken of
them more than once, yet it will be well to explain here how
notably they are needed, to show that they exist of their own
right, and what should be their organization and their mode of
action.
Accordingly, laws which prohibit unions are a violation of natural
law:
For, to enter into a "society" of this kind is the natural right of
man; and the State has for its office to protect natural rights,
not to destroy them; and, if it forbid its citizens to form
associations, it contradicts the very principle of its own
existence, for both they and it exist in virtue of the like
principle, namely, the natural tendency of man to dwell in society.
I am unaware of anything in this encyclical, or anything else in
formal Catholic teaching (a category which includes Papal encyclicals
but does not include editorials in Catholic magazines) which says that
workers should be forced to join (or pay dues to) a union which they
do not wish to join, or which says that getting rid of secret ballot
elections for unionization is a positive social good. Yes, I know that
EFCA technically allows for secret ballots, but the purpose of EFCA's
change in the "card check" rule is to eliminate both elections and
secret ballots.
References
1. http://www.catholicscholarsforworkerjustice.org/
2. http://www.americamagazine.org/
3.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html
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