"An old Catholic chapel" by WonderfulSnaps.com, CC BY 2.0
It’s an increasingly familiar story. Workers attempt to organize in spaces that by their stated virtues and values should be welcoming to worker solidarity. But the institutions stall or reject union campaigns and contracts. One can look to unionization or contract drives in non-profits like Audubon or the Southern Poverty Law Center; or supposedly justice-friendly businesses like REI.
Among these drives, unionization at Catholic institutions frequently stands out. Catholics have a clearly stated doctrine that not only supports unionization, but strikes and worker direct actions. Yet Catholic institutions frequently participate in the same anti-union activities as any other employer.
Underlying these anti-unionization tactics lies a telling question for Catholic leaders: are we prioritizing Catholic law or statutory law, and why? For worker organizers, there is a different central question: how do workers and their unions engage Catholic history, philosophy, and doctrine to win better contracts that serve not only workers but their respective communities?
To answer these questions, let’s take a brief look at a few case studies of organizing at Catholic institutions; what these case studies tell us about Catholic and union values; and what lessons they have for organizing in Catholic and other religious institutions.
"Archangel Saint Michael Church (Roman Catholic), Creeslough, County Donegal, Ireland.jpg" by Steve Cadman, CC BY-SA 2.0
Boston College's Anti-Union Playbook
At Boston College (BC), graduate workers launched a unionization campaign with support from the United Autoworkers (UAW). They won a union representation election in 2016. According to workers at the time, the university verbally committed to respecting the election outcomes. University administrators, however, launched an anti-union propaganda campaign. According to workers, the university also unfairly disciplined graduate students who participated in pickets and distributed flyers on campus, and in one case a student who was not present.
In addition to this more familiar anti-union campaign, Boston College claimed that the university was religiously exempt from federal unionization rules. BC isn’t alone in making this argument; Loyola Chicago, Marquette University, Duquesne University, and Seattle University have each claimed that their Catholic identity excuses them from collective bargaining processes, as it would allow government interference with religious practice. Moreover, BC administrations waited until a Trump-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) came to office to threaten unionization both locally and nationally. The possible anti-union ruling under a Republican-controlled NLRB forced the UAW to withdraw their petition, lest they spark a long-term precedent against organizing at religious-affiliated institutions. BC Grad workers are still fighting for union recognition.
A notable exception to this behavior is Saint Louis University, which agreed to respect a unionization vote and subsequently to bargain in good faith.
Successful Contract Organizing
Earlier this year, staff at Providence Health in Oregon – a nonprofit Catholic healthcare system – successfully struck for new contracts. Pay had fallen behind other health systems; nurses and doctors attended to more patients than they could manage; and workers’ health insurance fell short. Despite attempts to negotiate a contract, the Oregon Nurses Association – which represents nurses and healthcare workers across the state – felt forced to go on strike.
For many, the decision to strike is a heartbreaking choice. As Columbia sociologist Adam Reich explores in With God on Our Side, nurses have an exceptionally high sense of vocation. This emotional investment can lead nurses to a willingness to ignore material injury out of duty; resentment of seemingly uncaring administrators; or mobilization for the benefit of both workers and patients. Unionizing workers consider their own material needs and the well-being of their patients and broader communities.
After six weeks on strike and a previously-rejected contract, nurses and clinicians agreed to a new contract in February. The contract includes 16 to 42% pay increases, including retroactive increases from the end of the previous contract; a program to address staffing levels; and protections for breaks and mealtimes. The staff did not win a hoped-for common contract end date, which would have been a potential advantage in future negotiations.
"St-thomas-aquinas.jpg" by Carlo Crivelli, public domain
Creating Labor Accords
In the last twenty years, several Catholic employers created ground rules to ease the combativeness emerging between employers and workers. In the early 2000s, for example, Georgetown University witnessed a wave of worker-student solidarity. The solidarity actions reached a crescendo in 2005 when the Georgetown Solidarity Committee launched a hunger strike in support of dining hall workers. These movements pushed the school to create its Just Employment Policy. Under the policy, the university agreed to regular pay raises for full-time contract workers and guaranteed a fair process for recognizing unions on campus, among other commitments. While bargaining between the university and employees can sometimes be tense (as witnessed by the latest bargaining between the university and graduate workers), the university has at the very least agreed to recognize workers’ unions and bargain with them in good faith.
Church Law’s Theoretical Context
In each of these examples, workers and employers navigated Church and statutory laws. Before proceeding further, it is important to (briefly) unpack precisely what is meant by Church law.
For most of its recent history, the Catholic Church has relied on Natural Law, a philosophical and theological tradition popularized in Catholicism largely by Thomas Aquinas. Natural Law reflects the law of heaven and becomes knowable to humanity via observation and reason. In the last 500 years, Scholasticism gave way to the highly legalistic and regimented Neo-Scholasticism. Often more defensive in tone due to the rapidly changing world and the Church’s loss of geo-political authority, Neo-Scholasticism asserted the Church’s moral and theological authority.
Neo-Scholasticism paved the way for the codification of Canon Law, the legal system the Church uses to govern itself and its institutions. First codified in 1917, Canon law has undergone numerous smaller updates, with Vatican II (1962-1965) initiating a textual and theological revision that was completed in 1983.
In the United States, Catholic healthcare must also follow the Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs). Many institutions operate by negative law–a list of wrongs that they have to avoid. The ERDs, however, are positive law–guidelines for actively and faithfully pursuing human dignity and social justice.
Sufficiently Catholic, Sufficiently Secular
To prove themselves sufficiently Catholic, most religious institutions and religious orders (Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, etc.) have created guidelines for ensuring their respective institutions remain committed to the founding charism. If an institution is found to not be sufficiently committed, it might lose its religious identity and thus forfeit property, ecclesiastical rights, branding, funding support, and the right to call itself Catholic.
Yet in order to access federal dollars and abide by the “Establishment Clause” of the Constitution (which bars the government from establishing an official religion or preferencing one faith over another), Catholic institutions have to demonstrate to federal and state agencies that tax monies and grants will be used for non-religious activities.
If much of this sounds theory-heavy, that’s precisely because it is. The federal government and Church hierarchy and institutions try to walk a fine line so as not to upset the other. Yet it is exceedingly difficult to measure identity, character, or volition.
Is a faculty member at a Catholic university directly involved with the Catholic mission? What about a nurse at a Catholic hospital? By an institution's desire to prevent unionization, the answer is yes. By an institution’s desire to access federal funding, the answer is “maybe…” When the NLRB assesses these questions, they examine substantial religious character. In short, do the workers play a religious function?
Take for example Loyola University Chicago (LUC). In 2016, non-tenured faculty voted to unionize, which the NLRB held they had the right to do. LUC administrators appealed, arguing that the school’s Catholic identity excused them from a federally-authorized unionization process. The NLRB denied the appeal, but stated that the theology department would be excluded in the first contract. Recognizing this division, some Catholic schools have attempted to use the exclusion to divide workers. Theology students with whom I have spoken stated that they would rather other departments win a contract than everyone lose out on theology’s behalf; and professional theologians have demonstrated that this anti-union tactic is contrary to Church teaching.
These techniques, however, are a deliberate misinterpretation of the Church’s Tradition. The U.S. bishops stated in their 1986 letter “Economic Justice for All” that “No one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself. Therefore, we firmly oppose organized efforts, such as those regrettably now seen in this country, to break existing unions and prevent workers from organizing.”
Catholic and Canon law are designed to help Catholic institutions creatively, energetically, and devotedly live out their Catholic identity. Catholic law is not written merely to avoid wrongdoing, but to encourage pursuing the best good possible
The question, therefore, is not only which law to follow, but how to follow it. Workers or administrators using an instrumentalist approach will typically lead to shallow, short-term outcomes. Employing a positive or purposivist approach, on the other hand, pushes both workers and administrators into greater solidarity with their communities. Given the recent attacks on both healthcare and education, this solidarity will prove absolutely vital for the survival and success of these community institutions.
"Iglesia de San Félix, Torralba de Ribota, Zaragoza, España, 2018-04-04, DD 24-26 HDR.jpg" by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0
Opportunities
I have worked with numerous unions at Catholic institutions who want to utilize Catholic and Jesuit language in their campaigns. Sometimes this desire is akin to the rent-a-collar model in which a priest is trotted on stage to speak with moral authority at a rally, but not included in organizing.
Some of the most successful recent worker protection campaigns, however, have integrated religious communities as stakeholders, advocates, mobilizers, and organizers. For example, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) in Los Angeles recently brought together Catholic clergy and community leaders to defend workers against recent ICE raids and intimidations. This rapid response was possible because of years of coalition building between faith leaders and unions like Unite Here on campaigns ranging from anti-racism efforts to increasing wages and protections before the 2028 Olympics. These campaigns included moral clarion calls and escalation tactics. Organizers used justice-seeking Catholic law to change unjust statutory law.
If I could, I would close this essay with an example of effective Catholic organizing within Catholic institutions. Yet I cannot. Unfortunately, mid-twentieth century desegregation was the most recent effective campaign of organizing Catholic clergy and vowed religious to act for workers in Catholic institutions.
Herein lies the opportunity – effective organizing can engage Catholicism for more than just the language of a moralistic baseball bat. With a nudging one-on-one organizing conversation, Catholic clergy and religious can become important allies and leaders. Clergy often use the one-on-one to accompany, pastor, and encourage. Organizers often use the one-on-one to discover a common cause and urge a coworker to action. These organizing conversations have the elements necessary to push movements past instrumentalism into true solidarity.
Likewise, it is vital that administrators of Catholic institutions recognize that workers are those who most clearly enact the mission of the institution. Using statutory law to undermine Catholic law is a damning indictment of faith values. Instead, approaching questions of justice as an opportunity to more fully live out their Catholic law and identity strengthens institutions’ standing in their communities, creates smoother labor relations, and creates opportunities for dialogue and growth. Moreover, developing relationships with labor organizations fosters communities dedicated to a complete, proactive vision of justice that Catholic law demands.
At its core, worker and religious institutions often become defensive and use the law as a cudgel against each other. There is instead a shared invitation to unions and Catholic institutions – to proactively use the law to defeat injustice, poverty, and human despair.
