It is nearly dawn. The sun has only barely begun to peak its head above the smokestacks and factory rooftops that fill the city skyline. The year is 1898. You are on your way to work. You know the day will be long and the pay will be meager, but you also know that without it, your family won’t be able to make ends meet. You seem to be barely making it as is. As you walk along the industrial streets, a fellow worker hands you the latest issue of a magazine called The American Federationist. Within its pages, you find an article by a man named Samuel Gompers entitled “A Minimum Living Wage.” Something stirs within you as you read about the principles of a living wage: one “sufficient to maintain an average-sized family,” one that earns a person enough to pass on something to succeeding generations, and one whose “recognition and observance depends the welfare of society in our day and the progress and civilization of the future.” Fast forward more than 125 years, many strides and struggles have been won for those who get by on the sale of their labor power. Still, in our current age, many who work for a living find their wages insufficient to keep up with the rising costs of daily life. Rewinding back in time, perspectives on how to order a society to rectify this and other problems facing working people can be found in a document published seven years prior to Gompers’ article.
In the late 19th century, Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor) was put out in the face of a changing world. Since that time, Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 papal encyclical has become the backbone of Catholic social doctrine. A dense yet readable text, Rerum Novarum, subtitled “On Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor,” covers a wide variety of topics relevant to the time. With all that has changed since then, what does a document written in the late 1800s have to do with modern day America? Well, a lot, actually. The last few years has seen a resurgence in causes for worker’s rights and labor issues. Principles and ideas found in this encyclical remain as relevant today as when they were written. At a time where a new, robust labor movement is emerging in the United States, the principles of a fair wage, the right to unionize, and safe working conditions found within Rerum Novarum can serve as a compass for American Catholics and workers to use as their guide.
Rerum Novarum was written during a time of rapid industrialization. New modes of production coming out of the period we now know as the Industrial Revolution turned the old ways of small businesses and craftsmen into large scale, factory-centered manufacturing. This time period saw droves of people moving to cities in hopes to find wage work to support themselves and their families. With this, a new relationship was founded which took center stage in this new industrial world, that between those who owned the factories and those who worked there, between the capitalist and the laborer. In America, particularly, struggles to balance this relationship were underway, and now famous (or infamous) events in labor history, such as the 1845 Lowell Strike, 1880s railway strikes, the Haymarket Riot, and the 1892 Homestead Strike, as well the formation of organizations such as the American Federation of Labor (founded by the previously mentioned Samuel Gompers) and the Knights of Labor, provided a backdrop for the questions and answers found within Rerum Novarum.
To better understand the modern labor movement, we have to look back at the 1930s. The year 1929 saw the start of the Great Depression, a time that saw unemployment rates skyrocket and the worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) plummet. To attempt to combat these economic crises, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted a series of programs and reforms known as the New Deal. Among these reforms was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, whose aim was to help balance the scales of inequality between employee and employee through collective bargaining agreements. This period also saw the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the standard 40 hour work week, established the minimum wage, and outlawed child labor. Since the time of the New Deal, workers have continued to fight for better conditions. In our modern era, the financial crisis of 2007–2008, a stagnation in wages as prices and inflation continue to rise, and the safety and health risks many workers had to face during the COVID-19 pandemic have given rise to a climate ripe for workers to band together and organize.
The principle which drives Rerum Novarum is that of the inherent dignity of all people imbued by God. When speaking of the duties of an employer to their employees, Pope Leo says that one must not “look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person,” and “to misuse men (and women) as though they were things in pursuit of gain… is truly shameful and inhuman.” In another section, the Pope writes that “no man may with impunity outrage that human dignity which God himself treats with great reverence.” Building upon that principle, Pope Leo develops more precise ideas about the relationship between employer and employee, including ways in which workers ought to be treated in a just society.
Needing to work for a living should be looked at with dignity, not shame. From the Book of Genesis to the letters of St. Paul, the Bible speaks on the validity of work (see Gen. 2:15 and 1 Thess. 4:11, for example). Given the need to labor to earn one’s daily bread, Pope Leo stresses the importance that their wage allows a person “to procure what is required in order to live.” Many people in today’s workforce have only seen nominal wage increases, which has made things particularly difficult in the face of inflation and the rising cost of living. Data compiled by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing studies found that in 2022, “the median sale price for a single-family home in the United States was 5.6 times higher than the median household income,” and that across the country “home prices grew by 43 percent between 2019 and 2022, while incomes grew by just 7 percent.” This means that for a vast amount of working people and families, the American dream of home ownership unfortunately remains a dream and not a reality. Only recently have wages seen general increases and the rate of inflation has slowed. Still, many Americans continue to feel the stress of all the years of the price increases for everyday expenses, like grocery and gas prices.
The church teaches everyone has a right to earn a wage that provides them with the means to live. In recent years, this has been reflected in the fight for a federal $15 minimum wage. The last federal increase in the minimum wage was in 2009 and brought it to $7.25. The “Fight for 15,” as it’s known, began in 2012, and while it has made gains at the state level in 10 states, attempts at the federal level have proven unsuccessful. The “Raise the Wage Act” introduced in 2019 as well as an ultimately removed section of the 2021 “American Rescue Plan” tried but failed to solidify a $15 minimum wage into law. Still, the fight for all to earn a decent living is a battle we Catholics must continue to wage. As Pope Leo writes, “wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.”
Another principle stressed throughout Rerum Novarum is the freedom for people to be able to associate with one another. Pope Leo discussed the formation of workers’ unions, which he stressed as a right for all working people. In a statement that gets right to his point, the Pope writes, “working men’s associations should be so organized and governed as to furnish the best and most suitable means for attaining what is aimed at, that is to say, for helping each individual member to better his condition to the utmost in body, soul, and property.”
Unions hold an important place in the history of American labor. However, for about the last 75 years, union membership in the U.S. has been on a steady decline, from about 35 percent during the 1950s down to around 20 percent in the 1980s to currently being down to only 10 percent. In spite of this trend, the last few years has seen a wave of unionization efforts. Workforces at major companies like Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, and Google are among this current movement of unionization. When we look back through labor history, images of factory workers or trade unions often come to mind. Yet this modern wave is not confined to industrial work, rather it cuts across all industries, whether that be tech companies or the service industry. These efforts have been in the making for years, with education, strikes, clashes with owners, legal battles, and other organizing efforts. Workers at these companies have made great strides in helping mold the work landscape to one where all will be able to eat the fruits of their labor.
At the time Rerum Novarum was composed, horrid working conditions that led to injury and even death were commonplace. Pope Leo saw these dangers and understood the importance of a safe working environment. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a much-needed discussion about safety and health as it relates to the modern workplace. At what level of risk must a worker take in order to continue to earn enough to provide for themselves? Many were labeled as “essential workers” and needed to continue to report to their jobs in person. Yet many employees championed as heroes for keeping the economy running did not get an increase in pay or a share in the record profits many corporations saw during that time.
Rerum Novarum discusses not only the duties and rights of employees but the duties an employer owes to their employees. “To exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine.” And while the text advocates for government intervention and decision-making to take place at the most local level possible, the pope does encourage governments to step in when it is necessary to ensure the safety and common good of all. “The safety of the commonwealth is not only first law, but it is a government’s whole reason of existence.” With that, Catholic social teaching has continued to express the importance of people’s safety and well-being over the profits of a company.
Rerum Novarum continues to be a text Catholics and workers can look to to help them understand and strive for a just society. Workers across America and the world can take these principles, written over 130 years ago, and apply them to their own particular conditions and struggles. “Let us not grow tired of doing good,” St. Paul writes to the Galatians, “for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up.” Workers of today can take these words and the words of Pope Leo XIII as a sign not to give up fighting for their rights.
Image: Wikimedia Commons, Pope Leo XIII
Add comment