A Labor Day Message

The U.S. Bishops Speak on the Rights of Workers and Migrants

Every year, the Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development publishes a statement commemorating Labor Day that identifies positive areas in U.S. economic life but also issues that call out for greater justice. These annual statements are a reminder of the U.S. bishops’ commitment to the dignity of work and the rights of workers, even if these days that commitment is arguably somewhat more muted compared to when they published their monumental pastoral letter on the economy, Economic Justice for All, back in 1986, let alone the heyday of the close partnership between the American Catholic Church and the labor movement in the mid-20th century. That latter era is captured, for example, in Craig Prentiss’s Debating God’s Economy: Social Justice in America on the Eve of Vatican II, which I relied on greatly in the chapter on Social Catholicism in the United States in my own book Interrupting Capitalism: Catholic Social Thought and the Economy. Indeed, the bishops’ 2019 Labor Day statement, penned by the then Chair of the Domestic Justice Committee, Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of the U.S. bishops’ 1919 Program of Social Reconstruction, the set of policy recommendations crafted by the great Monsignor John A. Ryan, S.J. that eventually inspired aspects of the New Deal and really launched the U.S. bishops’ involvement in progressive economic policy advocacy. Clearly, the bishops see these statements as one way of carrying on this hallowed tradition.

Borys Gudziak, the Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia and the Chairman of the Domestic Justice Committee, was joined in authoring this year’s statement by Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, who chairs the USCCB’s Committee on Migration. As far as I can tell, this is the first time there has been a listed co-author for one of these statements, but there is a good reason in this case. In this year’s Labor Day statement, the bishops hope to bring home the principle that the rights of workers should not be considered separately from, or put in opposition to, the rights of migrants. This is not only because immigrants make up a significant part of the U.S. workforce, but because, by establishing a united front working toward securing the rights of both workers and migrants, it helps prevent those who exploit both groups from pitting one against the other. Likewise, as the statement points out, migrant workers are a net positive for the U.S. economy, creating more jobs and economic growth. The connection between labor rights and immigrant rights is something to which I have tried to call attention for a long time, and I am glad that the U.S. bishops are emphasizing it, as well.