More Community Support for SDACT Campaign
The following letters to the editor appeared in today's edition of the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
Union backer calls teachers’ request basic right to representation
As a 90-year-old practicing Catholic, I am appalled, embarrassed and saddened by the refusal of Bishop Joseph Martino to allow the diocesan teachers the right to choose their bargaining agent.
Like many people from Northeastern Pennsylvania, I come from a long line of union members.
My grandfather and my father belonged to the United Mine Workers; my husband was the president of Local 120 – The American Newspaper Guild; I belonged to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union; and my daughters, who were educated in Catholic schools for 16 years, were members of the teachers’ union.
Each of us was allowed to pick the union that represented us.
The Catholic teachers should have that same basic right.
Evelyn Pesavento
Kingston
Postal workers union supports Catholic school students, teachers
I would like to comment on the recent student walkout in a show of support for the Holy Redeemer teachers’ fight to be union-represented.
I applaud the many young men and women who braved the cold that day out of respect for their teachers’ struggle for better working conditions.
You all have earned the respect of the labor force in your community. You did it with dignity, using prayer and peaceful marching. One student was quoted as saying, “Teachers have dedicated their lives to cultivate ours.” I say, they have done a heck of a job at Holy Redeemer.
You may be considered just “kids,” but that day you took on something that clearly defines you as young adults. Even though you were threatened with disciplinary action, you still followed your hearts and went ahead with the walkout.
You may not have changed Bishop Joseph Martino’s decision to deny the teachers a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, but you definitely gave him something to think about.
Maybe it is he who should be disciplined. How about two hours of community service. He may then find out how the other half lives.
I congratulate the parents for the morals they have instilled in their children. And to the teachers at Holy Redeemer, the Wilkes-Barre Area Local American Postal Workers Union has your back.
John Kishel President, Wilkes-Barre Area Local 175, American Postal Workers Union Wilkes-Barre
Union backer calls teachers’ request basic right to representation
As a 90-year-old practicing Catholic, I am appalled, embarrassed and saddened by the refusal of Bishop Joseph Martino to allow the diocesan teachers the right to choose their bargaining agent.
Like many people from Northeastern Pennsylvania, I come from a long line of union members.
My grandfather and my father belonged to the United Mine Workers; my husband was the president of Local 120 – The American Newspaper Guild; I belonged to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union; and my daughters, who were educated in Catholic schools for 16 years, were members of the teachers’ union.
Each of us was allowed to pick the union that represented us.
The Catholic teachers should have that same basic right.
Evelyn Pesavento
Kingston
Postal workers union supports Catholic school students, teachers
I would like to comment on the recent student walkout in a show of support for the Holy Redeemer teachers’ fight to be union-represented.
I applaud the many young men and women who braved the cold that day out of respect for their teachers’ struggle for better working conditions.
You all have earned the respect of the labor force in your community. You did it with dignity, using prayer and peaceful marching. One student was quoted as saying, “Teachers have dedicated their lives to cultivate ours.” I say, they have done a heck of a job at Holy Redeemer.
You may be considered just “kids,” but that day you took on something that clearly defines you as young adults. Even though you were threatened with disciplinary action, you still followed your hearts and went ahead with the walkout.
You may not have changed Bishop Joseph Martino’s decision to deny the teachers a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, but you definitely gave him something to think about.
Maybe it is he who should be disciplined. How about two hours of community service. He may then find out how the other half lives.
I congratulate the parents for the morals they have instilled in their children. And to the teachers at Holy Redeemer, the Wilkes-Barre Area Local American Postal Workers Union has your back.
John Kishel President, Wilkes-Barre Area Local 175, American Postal Workers Union Wilkes-Barre
posted by SDACT at
5:37 AM
1 Comments:
2 March 2008
To the Editor:
Bravo to the extra-Ordinary students at Holy Redeemer who are living out their faith by supporting the teachers' unionization effort. If anyone deserves detention, it should be the Ordinary of the Diocese, who was apparently absent from his church-history classes the day they were studying the Sermon on the Mount, to say nothing of Leo XIII and the long and honorable tradition of Catholic social principles.
The students give me hope that the Church of the future may indeed have the spiritual guts to break free from its present captivity to lawyers, technocrats, and public-relations advisers and become pastoral once again. More than 40 years ago, I graduated from one of the parish high schools that eventually merged into Bishop Hoban and, now, Holy Redeemer. Back then, the nuns taught us that the most important things in life were to stay in a state of grace and keep your nose clean by never crossing a picket line. We learned how Cardinal Gibbons went to Rome on behalf of American labor unions; how Terence Powderly, the Catholic mayor of Scranton, was one of the founders of the Knights of Labor; and how Bishop Hoban and Monsignor Curran worked with Theodore Roosevelt and Johnny Mitchell on behalf of the United Mine Workers. Of course, we never dared harbor the thought back then that the nuns were really a source of cheap labor for an all-male priesthood and hierarchy, living in overcrowded convents and working for a widow's mite with a 50:1 student-teacher ratio in every classroom. Fair enough, we had a different world view then: spiritual discipline and sacrifice were valued differently--we saw things sub specie aeternitas so to speak. But hey, when you have to wait till hell freezes over for the church to recognize the dignity of a living wage and decent working conditions, eternity is in our midst in a radically different way.
I really see signs of the Spirit moving in what happened on Friday: the power of the laity to speak truth to power, even in Christ's church. Now that is worthy of eternity!
Edward Moran
Brooklyn, NY
By
Edward, At
March 28, 2008 at 10:18 AM
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home