Following is a statement from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde for Labor Day.

Labor Day is a day set aside to honor the worker. Work unites us, gives dignity to our lives, and allows us to play an essential role in continuing the work of God’s creation all around us. Our Catholic social tradition holds that all workers are valued as children of God, created in His image, no matter what they do or what they earn. We are part of one family in Christ where "love your neighbor as yourself" (Mt 19:19) takes on a new meaning. We cannot ignore the poor because Jesus, a working man Himself, did not forget them. He said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord" (Lk 4:18-19).

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council observed; "We are at a moment in history when the development of economic life could diminish social inequalities if that development were guided and coordinated in a reasonable and human way. Yet all too often it serves only to intensify inequalities. In some places it even results in a decline in social status of the weak and contempt for the poor" (Gaudium et Spes, 3,23). Nearly 40 years later the economic reality for many workers on Labor Day 2003, is a grim one. The working poor — whose annual incomes are below the federal government’s poverty line — struggle not just on this day, but every day to provide their families with the basic necessities of life; such as housing, healthcare, food and day care for their children.

As we reflect on the word of the Lord, let us fervently pray for the 274,000 residents of Virginia, including 159,000 children, who live in working poor families. Our children are the future of the Church and our country. Extensive and reliable data tell us that children attending schools in high poverty areas show less achievement in content areas than their counterparts in schools in low poverty locations. In our own diocese, there are significant pockets of child poverty in Alexandria, Arlington, Colonial Beach, Fredericksburg and Winchester. Remember that in the Commonwealth of Virginia, full-time employment at minimum wage is $10,700 per year. Over 50 percent of those entering shelters in our Commonwealth are employed full time, but are unable to move from homelessness to housing because rent for an average apartment requires 80 percent of the income of a full-time minimum wage earner. In this context, I applaud the city of Alexandria and, more recently, the county of Arlington, for passing living wage ordinances and resolutions that significantly improve the economic viability of service workers in these local municipalities. I call on all employers to consider the words of Blessed Pope John XXIII in his 1963 encyclical, Pacem In Terris, "the worker has a right to a wage determined according to criterions of justice, and sufficient, therefore, in proportion to the available resources, to give the worker and his family a standard of living in keeping with the dignity of the human person."

In addition to the need for just wages and benefits, I call on all employers to insure humane conditions for their workers. I recently joined with the Catholic Bishops of the South in a pastoral letter that called attention to the plight of poultry workers, many of them members of our diocesan community and Catholic immigrants from Latin America. In this industry and in many other businesses employers are summoned to heed the words of Deuteronomy: "You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Dt 10:19).

The economic problems of the working poor on this Labor Day extend far beyond our own backyards. One of the promises of globalization was the distribution of jobs to countries that needed them and could do them more cheaply. If globalization is to live up to its stated promises, we must commit ourselves to safeguarding the rights of workers in the developing world. Pope Leo XIII over 100 years ago in Rerum Novarum (1891) declared, "man's work and his very being are not to be reduced to the level of a mere commodity. These objectives include a sufficient wage for the support of the family, social insurance for old age and unemployment, and adequate protection for the conditions of employment." Without international controls on sweatshops and child labor, exploitation abounds. Millions of factory workers in Asia toil in unsafe conditions and earn anywhere from $11 to $190 a month. In Mexico, factory workers who try to organize in an attempt to raise wages in factories along the US border are fired and blacklisted. Haitian women working in factories are forced to work under such extreme conditions that by the time they reach 35-36 years of age, they are too broken to work. They are paid about $2 per day, which, in some cases, does not cover the cost of their transportation.

In these times of rising national unemployment, I call on each one of us who is blessed with a good job and the ability to provide bountifully for our families, to remember the least of our brothers and sisters. Our talents and skills are critically valuable possessions to be brought into the service of building Christ’s kingdom here on earth. I exhort all to pray for and to assist the unemployed and underemployed on this Labor Day.

Over 20 years ago, Pope John Paul II affirmed that work is at the center of social issues that affect justice and peace (Laborem Exercens: On Human Work, 1981). Let us resolve on Labor Day 2003 to renew our commitment to a just and peaceful society that respects every worker.