TO ALL DIOCESAN PARENTS: CATHOLIC EDUCATION WILL SUFFER IF UNION IS CRUSHED

Today, the teachers at Holy Redeemer High School in Wilkes-Barre, members of the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers, reported off from school ill and demoralized by the treatment they are receiving at the hands of the Scranton Diocese. This is the first of what could become a number of similar actions across the Diocese of Scranton.

The action is intended to call attention to the serious nature of the ongoing dispute with Diocesan officials where our teachers’ right to organize and bargain is being violated, contrary to the clearly-specified teachings of the Catholic Church.

Please be aware that the action taken at Holy Redeemer, the largest school in the Diocese, is a very measured and symbolic response to the current crisis, and is indicative of the narrowing options available to our teachers as they seek a resolution of the crisis.

Rather than disrupt the educational process at all schools where teachers support the union, at this point we have chosen instead to affect the educational process in one school for one day. We have chosen a high school, and have given the authorities there enough warning to be able to make plans to assure the safety of the students. In contrast, by not calling for a more general response from teachers at this point, parents of children in elementary schools are unaffected, and thus parents did not have to secure alternative child care.

We are making every effort to avoid a general disruption in the educational process, especially one that will be difficult for our parents. We invite all parents to lend us their support, in both word and deed because we believe our cause is just and because we believe that their voices would be valuable in promoting a peaceful resolution to this dispute.

In his letter on personnel policies that has been run as an ad in local papers, Bishop Martino alleges that the concern of our union over the last thirty years has been one based solely on financial issues. Once again, we believe that the Bishop is receiving bad advice from his consultants. We invite anyone in the community to objectively examine the facts to see if that evaluation is valid.

In its thirty-year history, the SDACT negotiated hundreds of contracts, each covering a gamut of employment terms and only two pages of which address salaries and fringe benefits, the rest being concerned with everyday working conditions, e.g. maternity leave, grievance processing and tenure.

First, we make no excuses for what our contracts have called for financially. Even at those schools that had the highest-paid teachers, wages and benefits ran far below those enjoyed by public school teachers. Our union has always accepted the fact that our teachers would never see parity in these areas. Instead, we have always looked on our job as a ministry or vocation, one in which we have had a chance to mold the next generation of Catholic adults into productive and Christian members of society. While we have always tried to negotiate a “living wage” and adequate health care for our families (both our rights under Church teaching), our prime focus has always been on creating working conditions which maximize our ability to provide the best possible learning environment for our students.

For the Bishop, therefore, to assume that to recognize the SDACT as the union for Diocesan teachers would be to foster greed and gratuitous economic self-interest is contrary to obvious and long-standing facts as well as an insult to our dedicated teachers. Again, we believe that the Bishop is getting bad advice.

The goal of the SDACT has always been and will continue to be to offer parents the quality education that includes a measure of self determination for the teachers. SDACT has negotiated for smaller class size, a modern curriculum, improvements to laboratory safety, better prepared teachers and myriad others issues affecting the school community. In some cases we have been a countervailing force to budgeting that would lead to less education rather than more.

Moreover, because of our union, veteran teachers now staff Diocesan schools – teachers who have dedicated their lives and careers to Catholic education. As such, parents have enjoyed the stability, continuity and professionalism of educators whose tenure has reached across several generations of students and parents. Without a union, such people would surely no longer staff our schools. Without being vested in the process, without having an independent voice to represent them or their concerns, teachers of the future would not make the same long-term commitment to Catholic education. Who could blame them? Prior to our union’s formation in 1978, the annual turnover of faculty in Catholic schools ran at about 40%. Those days are sure to return. What would happen to the quality of Catholic education under those circumstances?

Bishop Martino tries to make the point that in the past not all schools were unionized. It’s true that many small elementary schools were not. And, by the same token, it was not by virtue of the union’s negotiated agreements that saw such non-union schools lose enrollment and close. But non-union schools nonetheless benefited by the larger union schools pushing the bar upwards with regard to working conditions that then became standard practice everywhere.

Without our union, Catholic education as we have come to know and appreciate would surely cease to exist. We are certain that everyone in the Diocese, save one man, who is getting bad advice, understands these consequences. It is incumbent, therefore, for the community to convince that one man to reconsider his position.