«The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine,
beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion
of workers' associations that can defend their rights
must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past,
as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need
for new forms of cooperation at the international level,
as well as the local level.» (no. 25)
Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate)
Pope Benedict XVI, 2009
A long-cherished predisposition on the part of the Roman Catholic Church is that labor unions act as a protection against the exploitation of workers. From Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum forward, the Church has been an outspoken proponent of organized labor, worker safety and human dignity.
Thus, it comes as little surprise that the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops weighed-in when the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in February regarding the Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees case. At issue is AFSCME’s collection of dues from nonmembers in Illinois and the USCCB’s opposition to right-to-work legislation.
The USCCB’s amicus brief, however, succumbs to romantic notions of unions protecting employees from the child-labor sweatshops out of some 19th-century Dickensian dystopia or even Solidarity, the 1980s Polish trade union movement’s struggle against oppression of workers by the Communist state. The contemporary reality of collective bargaining, particularly that conducted by public- sector unions, is vastly different.
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El 23 de abril del presente año 2018, hace apenas algunos días falleció en Maracay, Venezuela, el dirigente sindical EDUARDO GARCIA MOURE, quien era el Vicepresidente de la Central Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Trabajadores Pensionados, Jubilados y Adultos Mayores-CLATJUPAM, antes había sido Secretario General de la Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores-CLAT, con asiento en Venezuela.
La ley 454, promulgada en Colombia en 1998, define en su artículo segundo la ECONOMÍA SOLIDARIA, como el “sistema socioeconómico, cultural y ambiental conformado por el conjunto de fuerzas sociales organizadas en formas asociativas identificadas por prácticas autogestionarias solidarias, democráticas y humanistas, sin ánimo de lucro para el desarrollo integral del ser humano como sujeto, actor y fin de la economía.”