More on Unions and the Church | National Catholic Reporter

More on Unions and the Church | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: There are two other major reasons for the decline of unions.  A major one is the gutting of the enforcement infrastructure at the U.S. Department of Labor and at the NLRB.  The second is the lowering of the top marginal tax rate, which for the first time in a long time gave the CEO class a personal financial incentive to go after unions and union pay.  As for AFSCME and the other public sector unions, they are very involved in politics because in many cases their wages are not subject to collective bargaining, but instead are a matter of law.  Getting cozy with legislators is part of that.  It is also way labor is pro-choice - because teachers are a big part of that coalition and they are mostly female and feminist.  The fact that the Church has fought unionization at the elementary level has also made it no friends on the issue of life.



Still, colleges are a different animal.  Even adjunct work is considered professional and unionization is a hard thing to sell when there are so many willing scabs who will cross the picket line and take that $1000 per credit hour teaching price, or if they are graduate assistants they will teach for free (or at their current fellowship rate).  Of course the best option for teachers is to form professional academies and job match undergraduates to future jobs and have the future employer pay the tuition and living expenses of the students - and maybe even the teachers if the firm is employee owned.