Justice in labour

Lately a perceptive cartoon has made the rounds on the social networks. It lampoons a history of attempts by business to limit labour rights by making dire warnings about the supposed consequences of improving working conditions.

In the cartoon, a businessman in 1842 warns that “if workers can legally strike, no business will be able to survive.” In 1887 another businessman warns of economic doom if a fair wage is paid, in 1912 the target is the abolition of sweat shops. The corporate tycoon in 1915 protests against unionisation and his counterpart in 1924 warns that banning child labour “would destroy the economy”. In 1938 the warnings concerned the 40-hour week, in 1964 equal pay across gender and racial lines, and in 1970 health and safety regulations, and finally in 2012 labour protection laws.

The cartoon refers to an American timeline, but the issues and the corporate scare-mongering are universal throughout the capitalist world.

In July Pope Benedict asks us, in his general intention, to pray “that everyone may have work in safe and secure conditions”.

In one brief phrase, the pope sets out the Church’s definition of ethical labour conditions: that employment is a right, that workers must be protected from arbitrary dismissal and exploitation, and that the workplace should not compromise the well-being of employees.

This month Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations agencies based in Geneva, restated the Church’s position on labour rights: workers, he said, must have healthy and safe working conditions, wage protection and decent working hours. Their employment opportunities must not be diminished by outsourcing and sub-contracting labour to other countries.

He warned that unemployment – especially youth unemployment, which is increasingly becoming a global problem – reverses development. The consequences are poverty, crime, substance abuse, social instability, increased welfare costs and loss of tax revenues.

These effects are acutely felt in South Africa, where the high rate of unemployment is chronic. More than 75% of South Africa’s unemployed fall into the youth bracket. Moreover, an estimated 60% of employed South Africans earn below R1,500 per month. By contrast, the CEO of cellphone company MTN – whose services the R1,500-earner might well pay for – reportedly earned R30 million last year.

In a country where the great majority of South Africans live on or below the breadline, there can be no justification for one man to be given a salary and benefits amounting to R30 million a year, regardless of how hard he works or how talented he is.

Such ethics as those that allow for the ever-increasing gap between highest and lowest earners – a reality throughout the world – are incompatible with Catholic teachings.

Where business is geared towards the maximisation of profits to serve the shareholders’ interests, upper management’s salaries and benefits, and the arbitrary moods of an all-powerful beast they call “the market”, the Church engages itself for those on whose toil and sweat the wealth of others is built.

Pope Benedict made the Church’s position clear in his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritae: “The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritise the goal of access to steady employment for everyone”.

The Church does not propose a plan to fix the economic and labour crisis, but it is right to state the elements of a just and ethical solution. It must incorporate social protections, since, as Archbishop Tomasi put it, all people have a right “to social security and to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of themselves and their family”.

The reflexive response by many may be to call this kind of thinking utopian, but to do so is to declare defeat to injustice and greed. For the Church, such a capitulation constitutes a denial of Christ’s mission to the poor and oppressed.

It is the function of Catholics, in dialogue with the world, to find ways in which social justice, development and growth can co-exist.