More than 600 attend meeting to hear diocese union

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.timesleader.com/news/latest/More_than_600_attend_meeting_to_hear_diocese_union.html

Mark Guydish

In a room full of more than 600 people, including some from Scranton, Hazleton and Williamsport, the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic School Teachers laid out its position in the battle to unionize Catholic School teachers and why it believes the community should support the effort.

Association President Michael Milz got a standing ovation after his self introduction to a group that filled nearly every seat - there were 18 rows of at least 35 chairs each - in the Grand Ballroom of Genetti’s Hotel and Convention Center in Wilkes-Barre Sunday afternoon, and started by thanking parents who had organized the meeting as an opportunity for the union to give its position and answer questions.

“If today we can’t convince you our union is about justice and dignity for workers, then we have no right to expect your support,” Milz said in his opening remarks.

Milz then gave a long list of Catholic Church written pronouncements supporting unions and the right of worker’s to unionize, from Pope Leo XII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum - which Milz said the Vatican issued specifically to suggest unions as an effective counter worldwide to the growing appeal of communism - to Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical in 2005, which noted that "the promotion of justice ... is something which concerns the Church deeply."

"After that, bishops in every country scrambled to put something out "showing their support" of the concept, Milz said, citing aNovember, 2007 document from U.S. Catholic bishops with a passage on the "dignity of work and rights of workers" that included as one of those rights "the choice of whether to organize and join unions."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops supported the same right in a Labor Day, 2007 statement, and Milz noted the Diocese of Scranton's own "School Policy number 417 echos the sentiment.

FULL story at link.