You're Right, Its Not Fair, But Will You Join Me in Changing It? - Fr. Sinclair Oubre, J.C.L. ( Sept. 2, 2004)

You’re Right, Its Not Fair, But Will You Join Me in Changing It?
Fr. Sinclair Oubre, J.C.L.

Appearing in The Examiner

September 2, 2004

While attending a Society of St. Vincent de Paul meeting in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the Social Ministry Gathering of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with St. Vincent de Paul members from the Houston area. The regional coordinator noted to the folks that I had just met my commitment to the union movement, and jokingly said, “Father, why don’t you work on Frank (not his real name). He runs a non-union construction company in Houston.”

Immediately, an uncomfortable moment descended around the table. Who would go first? Would Father break out into a vitriolic lecture on the rights of workers to organize into unions? Would Frank give the usual anti-union ideology that unions are no longer necessary in today’s improved economy?

Instead of the usual, we both sat there for a moment, hoping we could get around this moment without messing up a good supper, and a future friendship. Eventually Frank said that the problem that he had was that he could not compete with the other Houston companies if he had to pay the higher costs of a unionized workforce. At that moment the beers arrived, and the appetizers, and we all moved to the culinary issues at hand.

Frank’s comment, though, stayed on my mind. How can a company afford to do the right thing, and stay in business? When one’s competitors in a free market economy are using undocumented workers, circumventing wage laws, demanding the worker pay for his or her safety equipment and special training, passing on health costs to the public health care structure, and denying the employee’s retirement or pension plans, how can one compete? We see this every day as our manufacturing sector collapses, and more factories close. No American worker can compete with a worker from China who makes $4.00 a day. No matter how hard and efficiently the American works, the math is just not there, and jobs eventually go.

As I continued to ponder the competitive question, I hit upon a solution. What if business men and women of good will, those who want to do right by their employees join together, go to Austin and Washington, and tell our legislators, governor and president that they want to equalize the playing field. Instead of a company, who does right by their employees, being put out of business by a bottom-feeder, let’s legislate that every company will offer a basic health plan, a basic retirement plan, and establish minimum wage laws that guarantee that whether a worker is legal or illegal, all will be paid the same for the work that is done. What an idea, American companies compete on management skills, innovation and efficiency, instead of seeing who can drive down the earnings of workers most effectively.

Peter Maurin, the cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement once said, “Lets build a society where it is easier to be good.” Sadly, though, everything I read and hear is that when small, medium and large businesses go to their state capitol and the nation’s capital, the effort is always how to maximize one’s power, and minimize one’s responsibility. So we see companies that are competing with the bottom feeders often joining hands in legislation that in the end makes them less competitive, and gives more power and control to the very companies that are undercutting costs by putting ever greater pressure on their workers. Lou Dobbs on CNN has done a great job over the last few months of telling many of these types of stories.

On this Labor Day, I would like to make a few suggestions to our legislators and executive leaders. I believe that if these are followed we would go a long way in bringing Peter Maurin’s dictum to reality:

   1.   Every employee receives credit for each hour worked toward basic healthcare insurance based on forty-hours a week. Even part-time workers who must have two or three jobs could then get medical care.

   2.   Every employee receives credit for each hour worked toward a basic pension plan that with social security will allow him or her to retire in dignity.

   3.   Reform labor laws so that workers will be allowed to choose or not choose to have a union, and avoid the threats, intimidations and illegal firings that mark most of the organizing drives that take place today. (The Employee Free Choice Act, S. 1925 and H.R. 3619, sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), ensures that when a majority of employees in a workplace decide to form a union, they can do so without the debilitating obstacles employers now use to block their workers’ free choice.)

   4.   Reward companies that do well by their employees by awarding extra points in government contracting. This would avoid the embarrassment like that of the U.S. Navy under the Carter Administration, who payed more than a million dollars in charges for anti-union attorneys while workers were organizing at Avondale Ship Yard in New Orleans.

I am ready to go to Austin and Washington to push these issues forward so that an employer who wants to do good by his or her employees can be competitive. Who wants to join me on the train?