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Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

By Peter Laarman

…orst years—the George Meany/Lane Kirkland years—is long dead and buried. Today’s labor leadership is solidly aligned behind LGBT equality, comprehensive immigration reform, and much more within the broad human rights and civil rights agendas. Labor’s near-death experience in recent years taught it to be much better at alliance-building than the movement of 40 years ago—much better at practicing an ethic of genuine reciprocation in relation to othe…

King’s More Perfect Unions

By Kim Bobo

On Thursday night, just before this MLK holiday weekend, I spoke before a charter school board of directors whose teachers had voted two-to-one to be represented by the American Federation of Teachers. Instead of recognizing the teachers and negotiating a contract, the school had fired the lead teacher who helped organize the union and appealed to determine whether the school was covered by Illinois education labor laws. I began my short presenta…

Workers Once Forced the Social Gospel Into Churches—Can It Happen Again?

By Eric C. Miller

…the first Gilded Age, official church statements of support for organized labor were scarce. Today, many denominations have such statements and they could be used to hold clergy and laity alike accountable in the midst of labor disputes. Given that rates of religious affiliation vastly outstrip support for unions among Americans today, there is ample room for such accountability. One other constant bears mention here: because church life in Ameri…

Pricey Tickets, Cranky Citizens, and Priests Behind Bars as Philadelphia Prepares For Papal Visit

By Anthea Butler

…pitously? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful Catholics and others who want to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I didn’t get one, but my citizen journalist dues are current. Stay tuned….

The Christian Right’s Main Moral Argument Against Abortion Rights Completely Ignores This Critical Issue: It’s Time to Raise It

By Elizabeth Freese

…ons” not viable outside a mother’s body until after considerable gestation labor, but that labor is not incidental. At least one study has found that the work of gestation is on par with that of an endurance athlete. This also means that other forms of work often require more effort while simultaneously engaged in gestation, not to mention while in birthing labor and recovery. Conversely, the ability to avoid gestation labor—via birth control or a…

Will the Religious Side with Workers?

By Peter Laarman

…oversimplified bullet points: An unpleasant aftertaste: As noted above, today’s labor movement is tremendously diverse, both ethnically and racially. Women and people of color run some of the biggest unions. But many religious leaders of a certain age are more likely to recall the older exclusionary craft unionism. They remember cranky George Meany and his ever-present cigar. They remember the building trades—Meany’s crowd—raining both bricks and…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…, not the fourth century … You’re not free to practice your religion in my airline seat.’ ‘This is male entitlement .. the height of male arrogance.’ One comment referred to this as a ‘back of the bus’ issue; as in, women being asked to move in such circumstances was tantamount to assigning them a lesser status as citizens and lower dignity as human beings. Other readers proposed that airlines set aside special seating for men requiring such accom…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…

What Does a Moral Economy Look Like for the 99 Percent?

By Jonathan Rosenblum

…basis of a moral foundation. It will take wrenching change to transform today’s labor movement. It requires us to think about the labor movement as a moral force in society, not just an economic actor. One of the key lessons from Sea-Tac is that the elements of this new social movement union are everywhere around us, embedded in the daily struggles of working people. Our job, as people concerned about social justice, is to learn from these strugg…

Case Against Church-State Separation From Unlikely Source

By Peter Laarman

…special status, but it is hardly necessary for anyone wanting to fight for labor rights and for the dignity of workers today to buy into Daly’s whole libertas ecclesiae shtick. Not only is it not necessary: it is a wildly circuitous and highly dangerous route to take. Are some rights-based liberals unfriendly to unions and union culture? No doubt. Are these liberals as dangerous to unions and union culture as wealth-based conservatives? I don’t th…