Labor & Employment Law

Activists to Discuss New Catholic Hospital Organizing Rules

By James Parks

Seven months after the U.S. Catholic Church released guidelines aimed at improving sometimes bitter relations between workers and management in Catholic hospitals, the church’s social activists will learn how well the guidelines are working and what more can be done to ensure justice for workers. 

Paul Booth, executive assistant to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, and John Carr, executive director of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, will lead a panel on the guidelines Feb. 6 at the Catholic Labor Network Gathering in Washington, D.C.

For more information and to register, please click here or contact Fr. Sinclair Oubre at aos-beaumont@dioceseofbmt.org or phone 409-982-5111.

The document, “Respecting the Just Rights of Workers: Guidance and Options for Catholic Health Care and Unions,” was developed by a committee of Catholic clergy, members of the Catholic Health Association and representatives of the AFL-CIO and SEIU. 

The members of the network also will hear from union organizers campaigning at Catholic hospitals about what?s happening on the ground today. For example, the guidelines do not seem to be helping workers at Chicago-area Resurrection Health Care hospitals, who for years have worked to form a union for a voice at work and better patient care. Resurrection management has responded with an aggressive and expensive anti-union campaign. Resurrection has not committed to follow the new guidelines. 

The 16-page guidelines, which were released June 22, 2009, offer an alternative to what retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington called the “antagonistic, confrontational and resisting tactics which too often come in” when workers in Catholic hospitals seek union representation. McCarrick chaired the committee. Click here to read the guidelines.

Says McCarrick:

The heart of this unusual consensus is that it is up to workers?not bishops, hospital managers or union leaders?to decide through a fair process whether or not to be represented by a union and, if so, which union, in the workplace.

Catholic activists also will hear from Fr. Thomas Reese of Georgetown University, who will analyze the recent social encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (”Charity in Truth”), by Pope Benedict XVI.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).