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| Work must be adapted to the needs of the person. Photo Source |
First, work. Then we will examine wider issues relating to the creation of a society where the well-being of the least of its members is the measure of its success.
Most of the world devotes one day each year to honour the struggle of working people to gain conditions of work that reflected respect for them as human beings. May 1 is often the day selected to pay tribute to these ordinary people who united their concern for each other and became heroes. And are forced to continue to do so.. However, the U.S. is one of those countries choosing another date, and this year it's today, Monday September 4.
The importance of work for each individual's exercise of their God-given capabilities on the one hand, and the danger on the other hand that managers of capital, and investors themselves, submit to greed and abandon a good faith relationship of fairness in the employment relationship, makes it imperative there is constant review of business practices and outr attitudes to work.
There was a story in the news about 5 years ago that can teach us a little about the Catholic view on work. A Catholic website gives us this account:
A shopper named Karma Lawrence spied former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working scanning groceries at a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey and took a picture of him. On social media, Lawrence lamented what she thought was the bad, uh, karma life had doled out to Owens.
Owens, a Yale graduate, explained that decreasing royalties from Cosby reruns had put pressure on him to earn a regular living to support his family. Many of the tweets in support of Owens asked the question, “What’s wrong with someone doing an honest job?” At least, they wrote, he was working to support his family—no shame in that. In fact, it’s quite honorable.
When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a resume and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”
This is straight out of the Catholic playbook on its social teaching with regard the dignity of work and worker. The website adds:
Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker. The micro-marvel of tiny ants, dutifully working, carrying many times their body weight, gives God just as much glory as do the macro-marvels, like majestic mountain peaks piercing the clouds.
It’s like that with our work, too. As St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, wrote: “Before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything acquires the value of the love with which it is done.”
One might say that the greatest job, then, is the one that is done with the most love, for the glory of God.
Workers and the wider society
Catholic social teaching on how to support those who encounter the systemic obstacles to a full life, those obstacles that are the legacy of American history, is the subject of a statement just issued by the American bishops' conference to mark Labor Day. Its title is: Radical Solidarity with Working Families.
The statement points out that while there are positives in the US economy, there are elements of a structural nature that restrict and distort the lives of large numbers of families:
Three out of ten mothers report that there have been times in the past year when they could not buy food. Millions have been priced out of homeownership while rental housing becomes even less affordable. Healthcare is yet another expense that is becoming out of reach for too many. Roughly one out of two adults have difficulty affording medical care, causing many to delay or forgo care.
The previous statement had focused on "mothers, children, and families, sharing the bishops’ vision for an authentically life-affirming society that truly prioritizes the well-being of families and generously welcomes new life".
The Church had joined in offering nutrition programs, affordable housing, access to healthcare, and safety net programs. Now it saw the need to call for sustained attention to:
[...] justice for workers – including things like just wages, support for organized labor, and safe working conditions regardless of immigration status – and policy solutions to support all children and families.
Fundamental to this kind of discussion is our understanding of the priorities involved: "Economic activity and material progress must be placed at the service of the person and society" (Source #326). The economy and business activity are for the person and the basic cell of society, the family. The bishops' statement puts it this way:
The purpose of the economy is to enable families to thrive. This notion is deeply rooted in Catholic social teaching. The Church teaches that “it is necessary that businesses, professional organizations, labor unions and the State promote policies that, from an employment point of view, do not penalize but rather support the family nucleus” [See * below]. Similarly, the Second Vatican Council concluded that “[t]he entire process of productive work... must be adapted to the needs of the person and to his way of life, above all to his domestic life, especially in respect to mothers of families....”[See ** below] Are we meeting these standards? There is much more we can do.
Gaps in American society's care for working families
Congress enacted important laws at the end of last year that the U.S. bishops had supported including the PUMP Act and a permanent option for states to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for one year after birth. While these are promising steps, there remains much to be done to advance policies that help women, families, and children.
💢 Congress should strengthen the Child Tax Credit. The credit is a powerful pro-family and anti-poverty program, yet it currently excludes too many children in need. Congress can better support families by structuring the credit so that it is fully refundable in order to have the biggest impact on the lowest-income families. It is also vital that the credit continue to serve all families with U.S. citizen children regardless of their parents' immigration status, be made available for the year before birth, not undermine the building of families, and not be paid for by cutting programs that serve those most in need.💢There should be national support for paid family leave. The policy should be crafted in a way that does not unduly burden lower-income organizations or individuals, does not penalize larger families, and will not destabilize existing social service programs. The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does not guarantee paid family leave. It is pro-life to support families as they welcome new life and care for loved ones.
Workers as victims of suppression of unions
💢There needs to be better access to affordable, quality child care and pre-kindergarten, which also ensures just wages for child care workers and teachers. In addition, families that choose to care for children at home should be supported. Faith-based child care and early education programs have served families for decades and should be included as part of the solution, in a manner consistent with their freedom to retain their religious character. Child care is one of the biggest expenses in many families’ budgets, and it is causing many families to have fewer children than they would like. At the same time, the child care sector itself is plagued with low wages for workers, making it difficult for them to meet the needs of their own families. Working families need a solution to this child care crisis.
Finally, the essential role labor unions can and often do play in society must be acknowledged and affirmed. As Pope Francis stated when meeting delegates from Italian trade unions, “… one of the tasks of the trade union is to educate in the meaning of labor, promoting fraternity between workers… Trade unions… are required to be a voice for the voiceless. You must make a noise to give voice to the voiceless.” Unions should continue to be supported in their work that supports healthy, thriving families, especially those who are most in need, and encouraged in maintaining and increasing their focus on performing that critical role. Indeed, as Pope Francis has suggested, “there are no free workers without trade unions.”
As an outsider, I suggest that as such a wealthy country the U.S. should be ashamed of itself that it promotes economic and social inequality by withholding statutory paid leave of the type most advanced countries have had for many years. The threat of a rail strike in the U.S. last year on issues such as this highlighted the low regard given to working people in much of the American economy. By way of comparison, "The European Union Member States adopted four weeks of paid leave per year as a minimum European-wide standard in 1993". Four weeks of paid leave. In 1993! That ILO source also provides a chart showing how emerging nations such as Algeria and Brazil reveal the fact that American workers often remain victims of employer theft of family time.
Privatised profits versus socialised costs
One can justifiably extend that to wage theft as well. From the Economist magazine in 2019:
The OECD, a club mainly of rich countries, compares minimum wages around the world by adjusting for inflation and the cost of living, and converting them into American dollars. On that basis Australian workers pulled in at least US$12.14 an hour last year, up by nearly 4% from 2017. That puts them narrowly ahead of their peers in Luxembourg, ranked second, and a whopping two-thirds better off than federal minimum-wage earners in America (my emphasis).
Many business leaders take an amoral perspective of their role. They are among those still bound to Milton Friedman's principles of economic freedom for investors and managers (privatised profits) within a low-tax environment, of a sentence of submission for workers, with the government (or philanthropists) picking up the social cost of business activity. Therefore, as a final dip into the rich source of understanding of our human predicament that is the Church's social teaching, here is a statement from the Compendium of Social Doctrine (see below no. 332):
The moral dimension of the economy shows that economic efficiency and the promotion of human development in solidarity are not two separate or alternative aims but one indivisible goal. Morality, which is a necessary part of economic life, is neither opposed to it nor neutral: if it is inspired by justice and solidarity, it represents a factor of social efficiency within the economy itself. The production of goods is a duty to be undertaken in an efficient manner, otherwise resources are wasted.
On the other hand, it would not be acceptable to achieve economic growth at the expense of human beings, entire populations or social groups, condemning them to extreme poverty. The growth of wealth, seen in the availability of goods and services, and the moral demands of an equitable distribution of these must inspire man and society as a whole to practise the essential virtue of solidarity,[***] in order to combat, in a spirit of justice and charity, those “structures of sin” [****] where ever they may be found and which generate and perpetuate poverty, underdevelopment and degradation. These structures are built and strengthened by numerous concrete acts of human selfishness.
The care for working families is the responsibility of society as a whole, but directly, each business corporately and each leader within the enterprise. For society to take such a stance, the political system must be oriented to social support, which, in turn, involves on the resources and good will of those with the means to help those in need of support, from life at its beginning to the point of a natural death.
* Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 2004, no. 294 (Quoting Laborem Exercens, no. 10; Familiaris Consortio, no. 23).
** Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), 1965, no. 67.
*** Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, on the ethical implications of the social and economic order, 1931, no. 694.
**** Ibid., no. 695.
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| Society needs to espouse the essential virtue of solidarity. Photo Source |
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