c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In a Labor Day message, a spokesman for the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops criticized labor unions for their divisions, and large retailers for resisting unionization.

“To move forward, our nation needs a strong and growing economy, strong and productive businesses and industries, and a strong and united labor movement,” said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, chairman of the domestic policy committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

DiMarzio also said a “fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring.”

DeMarzio’s comments were contained in the bishops’ annual Labor Day message, this year titled “Work, Pope John Paul II and Catholic Teaching.”

The message cited a number of “troubling signs” in the economy that make it difficult for families to reconcile the demands of work, family life, and community and spiritual life.

At the top of the list was the fractured labor movement.

“Sadly the American labor movement seems bitterly divided over priorities, personalities, and how to move forward,” the statement said.

In July, three major unions _ the Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers _ broke away from the AFL-CIO, organized labor’s umbrella organization. They represented about 4 million of the 13 million workers in the AFL-CIO. With several other unions, they have formed the Change to Win Coalition to focus the union movement’s efforts more on organizing workers than on Democratic Party politics.

DeMarzio also cited what he called the “growing conflict in some local communities, and on Wall Street, about the obligations of large retailers and major employers to their workers in the United States and around the world, and the communities they serve.”

Although the bishop named no “large retailer” by name, Wal-Mart has become a target of the labor movement for its resistance to unionization, its low wages and its lack of benefits such as health care. Other activists _ including local politicians _ have fought the multibillion-dollar chain over its alleged negative impact on small-town downtowns.

“In Catholic teaching,” the Labor Day statement said, “it is up to workers to choose how they wish to be represented in the workplace, and they should be able to make these decisions freely without intimidation or reprisal.

Pope John Paul II, the statement noted, taught that trade unions “have the church’s defense and approval.” Unions not only have a role in negotiations but are also places “where workers can express themselves” and an “indispensable element of social life, especially in modern industrial societies.”

The statement also said all workers have “the right to … just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions, as well as to organize and join unions or other associations.”

It noted that the current minimum wage, last raised in 1997, leaves a full-time worker with two children below the poverty level and “the gap between executive and worker compensation continues to widen dramatically.”

MO/PH END RNS