From the The Wall Street Journal via The Pew Forum: Crisis of Faith Between Church, Union? (also ref. the Scranton Times Tribune and information available at the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers website).
Many parishes in Scranton, Pa., display a picture of the Most Rev. Michael Hoban, the Scranton bishop who backed coal miners during a bitter six-month strike in 1902.
But the church and organized labor don’t see eye-to-eye in Scranton these days. Diocesan officials have withdrawn recognition of the local parochial-teachers’ union and laid off its president, angering many local residents and Pennsylvania lawmakers. It was only the latest blow-up between financially struggling dioceses and teachers seeking job security and raises. Their salaries can lag behind those of public schools by $20,000 to $40,000 a year…
While Bishop Hoban may have been friendly towards Coal Miners and the UMWA that was simply the result of two things: The majority of Catholics in Scranton were coal miners and families of coal miners and the fact that Bishop Hodur and the PNCC, who Bishop Hoban fought tooth and nail, were particular and staunch friends of Labor; he couldn’t be seen as acquiescing to the PNCC claim of support for Labor.
Many of the R.C. prelates of that day fought bitterly against Organized Labor and its friends. They branded organizations, such as the Polish National Alliance (which at the time included both Roman, Polish National, Protestant, and even atheist Poles, and was non-sectarian) as subversive elements or even communist/”Masonic”/”Jewish” frontsHistory of the Polish National Catholic Church and Its Background – Lecture I and the History of the Polish National Alliance in particular: In 1886 the Alliance became the first Polish fraternal to set up its own burial insurance plan. This move was important to its success in building its membership, despite early criticisms the Alliance received from some clergymen who charged that its recruitment of non-[Roman] Catholics made it an “anti-Catholic” organization. These charges were aggressively refuted by member activists, some of them priests, who appealed for a fair review of their program.. In fact it has been alluded to that the FBI kept watch over the PNCC right through the 1960’s because of its ties to Labor and to Poland. In the more recent past (1990’s through the present) various Diocese have fought against efforts at organizing for collective bargaining, especially among teachers ref. here, here, here and a very interesting legal perspective in Some Reflections on Labor and Employment Ramifications of Diocesan Bankruptcy Filings, wherein the author states:
Although the Catholic labor encyclicals and the Bishops’ Pastoral Letters eloquently proclaim the rights of workers to unionize, most teachers in Catholic schools are not unionized. This notorious paradox flows from NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, wherein the United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment of the Constitution prohibited the excessive entanglement of secular government and of secular law, such as the National Labor Relations Act and the National Labor Relations Board, in the internal governance and theology of the Church. Consequently, as a matter of federal law, teachers in Catholic primary and secondary schools do not have the right to form labor unions and to bargain collectively with their employer. Neither do faculty at Catholic colleges have any such rights.
The relationship between Roman Catholic prelates in the United States and Organized Labor is hit and miss and as stated above internally disparate from stated Church teachings. An excellent analysis of the situation can be found in Keeping Faith With Labor: Can Unions and Churches Maintain Their Longtime Friendship? from the Catholic Education Resource Center.
The PNCC remains a consistent supporter and friend of Labor among Catholic Churches. It is my sincere hope the Organized Labor rediscovers the roots of that support and in turn sees the strength to be derived from that relationship.