Workers' rights Archives

Bishops’ annual Labor Day statement scores ‘excessive inequality’
- Catholic News Service, Church in the US
- August 31, 2017
In a Labor Day message, Bishop Frank J. Dewane said unions must retain and recover their prophetic voice, when they speak on behalf of the poor, the immigrant, and the person returning from prison. The bishop, who is chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, also said unions should “resist the temptation of becoming too similar to the institutions and powers that it should instead criticize.”
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A supposedly anti-capitalist pope channels his inner entrepreneur
- Vatican
- May 28, 2017
In terms of broad public perceptions, Pope Francis is often seen as hostile to Capitalism and no real friend of corporate culture. Yet on Saturday in Genoa, he delivered a reflection on business activity worthy of a graduate-level MBA program, among other things arguing that exploiting workers isn’t just immoral but also economically self-defeating.
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Pope Francis: robbing people of work “a grave sin”
- Catholic News Service, Vatican
- March 15, 2017
Pope Francis on Wednesday said whoever “because of economic maneuvering and business dealings that are not all transparent, closes factories and businesses and takes work away from men and women commits a grave sin.”
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When pope backs workers, Vatican laity wonder, ‘What about us?’

With a flourish he inherited from Argentina’s legendarily populist political force, Peronism, Pope Francis from the beginning has been a vocal champion of labor and workers’ rights, backing measures such as equal pay for equal jobs between men and women, affordable housing and land, and living wages. However, some of the Vatican’s own lay employees would like to ask him, “What about us?”

Pope calls employers who exploit workers ‘bloodsuckers’

ROME— Pope Francis on Thursday condemned employers who only offer temporary contracts or no health insurance to employees, calling them “bloodsuckers,” and saying they exploit those who desperately need a job by turning under-the-table payment into “civilized slavery.” “Those poor people become slaves. We think of the here and now,