Appreciate your commentary as always, Eve. My knowledge of labor history is admittedly skewed, as I'm active in a pre-majority union organized through CWA, but I hope this comment is of some value despite its biases. I think the movement's tendencies toward atheism make it that much more necessary for Catholics to engage with labor rights in a meaningful way. (Personally as a bi Catholic who's active in labor, I see a lot of parallels with mainstream Catholic hostility toward both the labor and LGBTQ+ movements in the US, but I think this will be a long enough comment without getting too far into it.) I think, too, that the UAW perspective you're describing is shared by many of the organizers I know as well. Established unions can tend toward a minimal-effort service model that upholds existing power structures while keeping workers complacent through some light wealth redistribution and basic job security (all the while trading rights for those small concessions), and from my understanding this model was largely established in the 1950s in the United States: more a workplace (white, straight) men's club than something truly reflecting solidarity. It takes a lot of honesty and hard conversations to grow unions that value and reflect the perspectives of marginalized workers, but I believe it's a goal worth working toward. (In the meantime, though, I'll keep singing along to all the classic union tunes, except perhaps the ones where the movement's atheism and misogyny are most rampant.)
Appreciate your commentary as always, Eve. My knowledge of labor history is admittedly skewed, as I'm active in a pre-majority union organized through CWA, but I hope this comment is of some value despite its biases. I think the movement's tendencies toward atheism make it that much more necessary for Catholics to engage with labor rights in a meaningful way. (Personally as a bi Catholic who's active in labor, I see a lot of parallels with mainstream Catholic hostility toward both the labor and LGBTQ+ movements in the US, but I think this will be a long enough comment without getting too far into it.) I think, too, that the UAW perspective you're describing is shared by many of the organizers I know as well. Established unions can tend toward a minimal-effort service model that upholds existing power structures while keeping workers complacent through some light wealth redistribution and basic job security (all the while trading rights for those small concessions), and from my understanding this model was largely established in the 1950s in the United States: more a workplace (white, straight) men's club than something truly reflecting solidarity. It takes a lot of honesty and hard conversations to grow unions that value and reflect the perspectives of marginalized workers, but I believe it's a goal worth working toward. (In the meantime, though, I'll keep singing along to all the classic union tunes, except perhaps the ones where the movement's atheism and misogyny are most rampant.)