Backgrounder on Protecting Workers and Promoting the Dignity of Work, January 2016

Backgrounder on Protecting Workers and Promoting the Dignity of Work. January 2016

The U.S. Bishops believe work as a fundamental expression of human dignity and summarizes the Church’s social teaching on protecting workers’ rights, identifies current economic challenges that undermine those rights, and states the USCCB’s policy priorities to strengthen workers’ economic security.

Human dignity and rights of workers

• Foundational claim: Work participates in creation and is essential to human dignity and family life.
• Enumerated rights: just wage; rest; safe physical and moral working conditions; protection of personal conscience and dignity at work; unemployment supports; pension and insurance for old age, sickness, and work accidents; maternity-related social security; freedom of assembly and association.

Contemporary challenges to workers

• Technology and globalization: Scientific/technological progress and global markets increase productivity but also raise risks of worker exploitation and erode traditional protections.
• Decline of collective protections: Falling union density in the U.S. coincides with reduced worker bargaining power and weakened workplace protections.

Wages and working poor

• Moral teaching on wages: A just wage is the legitimate fruit of work and must enable a dignified livelihood; wages cannot be left solely to market forces.
• U.S. trend: Wage stagnation and growth in low-wage employment; over 10 million “working poor” and the largest share of the workforce in poverty in two decades.

Inequality and wealth concentration

• Uneven gains: Productivity and GDP have grown over decades, but gains have disproportionately flowed to the wealthy.
• Wealth effects: Homeownership and financial assets (stocks, retirement savings) are concentrated at the top, leaving most families with diminished wealth after the recession.
• Social consequences: Economic inequality contributes to broader social, emotional, and public‑health problems.

Right to association and unions

• Church support: Labor unions are endorsed as a necessary institution for modern society that embody solidarity and subsidiarity and protect workers’ dignity.
• Trend: Union membership in the U.S. has declined to historic lows, weakening a key tool for worker protection.

USCCB policy position and recommendations

• Principle: Catholic teaching accepts some inequality but insists policies prioritize meeting the poor’s basic needs and broadening participation in economic life.
• Advocacy priorities: the bishops support raising the federal minimum wage, extending tax credits for low-income working families, and increasing funding for job training to improve economic security for workers and families.

2016-01-Employment-Labor-DSD-Backgrounder-Protecting Workers and Promoting the Dignity of Work.pdf