WASHINGTON — "Excessive inequality" threatens
cooperation among all people in society "and the social pact it
supports," said Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Fla., in the U.S.
bishops' annual Labor Day statement.
Bishop Dewane cited the words of Pope Francis, who told factory
workers in Genoa, Italy, "The entire social pact is built around work.
This is the core of the problem. Because when you do not work, or you work
badly, you work little or you work too much, it is democracy that enters into
crisis, and the entire social pact."
Dated Sept. 4, the federal Labor Day holiday, the statement was
released Aug. 30.
Bishop Dewane, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on
Domestic Justice and Human Development, pointed to a "twisted
understanding of labor and laborers" that fosters deepening inequality.
In Genoa, the pope "acknowledges that 'merit' is 'a
beautiful word,'" Bishop Dewane said, "but the modern world can often
use it 'ideologically,' which makes it 'distorted and perverted' when it is
used for 'ethically legitimizing inequality.'"
"Wages remain stagnant or are decreasing for the vast
majority of people, while a smaller percentage collects the new wealth being
generated. Economic stresses contribute to a decline in marriage rates,
increases in births outside of two-parent households and child poverty,"
Bishop Dewane added. "Economic instability also hurts the faith community,
as Americans who have recently experienced unemployment are less likely to go
to church, even though such communities can be a source of great support in
difficult times."
He said, "When a parent — working full time, or even working
multiple jobs beyond standard working hours — cannot bring his or her family
out of poverty, something is terribly wrong with how we value the work of a
person."
"Pope Francis has said it is 'inhuman' that parents must
spend so much time working that they cannot play with their children. Surely
many wish for more time, but their working conditions do not allow it."
He quoted St. John Paul II's encyclical "Centesimus
Annus": "Profit is a regulator of the life of a business, but
it is not the only one; other human and moral factors must also be considered
which, in the long term, are at least equally important for the life of a
business."
"A culture that obsesses less over endless activity and consumption
may, over time, become a culture that values rest for the sake of God and
family," Bishop Dewane said.
He added, "Our Lord's 'gaze of love' embraces men and women
who work long hours without rest to provide for their loved ones; families who
move across towns, states, and nations, facing the highest risks and often
suffering great tragedy in order to find better opportunities; workers who
endure unsafe working conditions; low pay and health crises; women who suffer
wage disparities and exploitation; and those who suffer the effects of racism
in any setting, including the workplace."
Bishop Dewane suggested several approaches to right the imbalance
brought by inequality.
"Worker-owned businesses can be a force for strengthening
solidarity, as the Second Vatican Council encouraged businesses to consider
'the active sharing of all in the administration and profits of these
enterprises in ways to be properly determined,'" he said. "The
Catholic Campaign for Human Development has helped in the formation of many
employee-owned companies which provide jobs in communities where work
opportunities may be scarce."
Workers' legal rights to "a just wage in exchange for work,
to protection against wage theft, to workplace safety and just compensation for
workplace injuries, to health care and other benefits, and to organize and
engage in negotiations, should be promoted," he added.
"Workers must be aided to come to know and exercise their
legal rights. As an example, CCHD has supported the Don Bosco Workers in
Westchester, N.Y., which has launched a successful campaign to combat wage
theft. Persons returning from prison also need support to understand their
legal rights as they seek new employment. CCHD has helped the Society of St.
Vincent de Paul in Cincinnati and elsewhere as they work with returning
citizens to find stable and meaningful jobs."
Labor unions play an important role in this effort, according to
Bishop Dewane, as he quoted from Pope Francis' remarks in June in an audience
with delegates from the Confederation of Trade Unions: "There is no good
society without a good union, and there is no good union that is not reborn
every day in the peripheries, that does not transform the discarded stones of
the economy into its cornerstones."
"Unions must retain and recover their prophetic voice, which
'regards the very nature itself of the union, its truest vocation. The union is
an expression of the prophetic profile of society,'" he said, quoting
further from Pope Francis, who added, "The union movement has its great
seasons when it is prophecy." Bishop Dewane added that unions should
"resist the temptation of becoming too similar to the institutions and
powers that it should instead criticize."
Bishop Dewane said, "Unions are especially valuable when
they speak on behalf of the poor, the immigrant and the person returning from
prison."