WISCO

ONSIN CAT
THOLIC CO
ONFEREN
NCE

TO: Members, Joint

J Commiittee on Finaance

FROM: Archbishop
p Jerome E. Listecki,
L Preesident

DATE: February 16
6, 2011

RE: Statement Regarding

R th
he Rights of Workers andd the Value of Unions

The Churrch is well aware

a that difficult econo
omic times ccall for hard choices andd financial
responsibbility to furth
her the commmon good. Our O own diooceses and paarishes havee not been
immune to the effects of the currrent economiic difficultiees. But hard times do noot nullify the
moral obbligation each h of us has to respect thee legitimate rrights of woorkers. As Pope Benedicct
wrote in his 2009 enccyclical, Carritas in verittate:

Governments
G s, for reasonss of economiic utility, oft
ften limit the freedom or the negotiatting
caapacity of laabor unions. Hence tradiitional netwoorks of soliddarity have m more and moore
obbstacles to overcome.
o The
T repeated calls issuedd within the C Church's soccial doctrine,
beginning witth Rerum No ovarum [60], for the prom motion of w workers' associations thatt can
defend their rights
r must th
herefore be honored
h todday even morre than in thee past, as a
prrompt and faar-sighted reesponse to thhe urgent neeed for new fo forms of coopperation at thhe
in
nternational level, as welll as the locaal level. [#255]

It does noot follow fro

om this that every
e claim made by woorkers or theeir representaatives is valiid.
Every unnion, like eveery other eco
onomic actorr, is called too work for thhe common good, to makke
sacrificess when requiired, and to adjust
a to new
w economic realities.

Howeverr, it is equallly a mistake to marginaliize or dismisss unions as impedimentts to econom mic

growth. As Pope Joh hn Paul II wrrote in 1981, “[a] union remains a coonstructive ffactor of soccial
order andd solidarity, and it is imp
possible to ig
gnore it.” (L
Laborem exeercens #20, eemphasis in
original)

It is especially in tim
mes of crisis that
t “new forms of coopperation” andd open comm munication
become essential.
e We
W request th hat lawmakerrs carefully cconsider the implicationns of this proposal
and evalu uate it in term
ms of its imppact on the common
c goood. We also appeal to evveryone –
lawmakeers, citizens, workers, and labor unio ons – to move beyond divvisive wordss and actionss and
work tog gether, so thaat Wisconsin n can recoverr in a humanne way from the current fiscal crisis.

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