Catholic teachers and unions

Here is an interesting article from today's New York Times -- with the unfortunate, but typical, headline, "Employment by Dogma?" -- about "teachers at five Catholic schools [in Brooklyn and Queens who] insist that the church has ignored its own tenets of social justice by engaging in unfair labor practices against their union." According to the article, "New York State has backed up the charge with a complaint against the Brooklyn diocese."

According to the article, "the impasse in the Brooklyn Diocese, where about 145 other Catholic schools remain without a union, presents a problem for a church with a tradition of social justice teachings that uphold not only the right to unionize, but also an employer's duty to pay a just wage. Those ideals are bumping up uncomfortably against the economic realities of declining enrollments, shrinking budgets and closings."

No one denies, I imagine, that teachers in Catholic schools do heroic work for not-nearly-enough money (time to put more money in the weekly envelope!). The analysis in this article, though, strikes me as a bit simplistic. Here is more:

While church teachings do not mandate unions, they have supported the right to join them as a way of both ensuring the dignity of employees and giving them a level of bargaining power. Stephen J. Pope, who teaches moral theology at Boston College, said that much of it was laid out in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, whose encyclical on capital and labor, "Rerum Novarum," tried to show how capitalism could produce a just economic system. The centerpiece, Mr. Pope said, was the concept of a just wage. "A worker has to be able to support himself and his family," Mr. Pope said. "That includes not only wages now, but also an array of benefits and rights including health care, dental care, a right to occupational work safety."

I wonder if the kind of dynamics and power imbalances to which Leo XIII was speaking in 1891 -- and which still, I believe, give rise to a need for labor unions today -- are really present in the context of Catholic schools? I tend to be skeptical, generally, about extent to which teachers' unions promote the common good. Even if I weren't, though, it seems to me that the profit motive that, so the argument goes, creates incentives for "capital" to short-change "labor" is not present when we are talking about parish elementary schools. But maybe Lucia, Stephen, or others can set me straight . . .

Rick