FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL: Crisis of Faith Between Church, Union?

The following article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2008:


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Many parishes in Scranton, Pa., display a picture of the Most Rev. Michael Hoban, the Scranton bishop who backed coal miners during a bitter six-month strike in 1902.

But the church and organized labor don't see eye-to-eye in Scranton these days. Diocesan officials have withdrawn recognition of the local parochial-teachers' union and laid off its president, angering many local residents and Pennsylvania lawmakers. It was only the latest blow-up between financially struggling dioceses and teachers seeking job security and raises. Their salaries can lag behind those of public schools by $20,000 to $40,000 a year.

The labor clash symbolizes the struggle within the largest U.S. religious denomination to keep alive once-bedrock institutions that defined the lives of American Catholics and nurtured believers from cradle to grave. Dioceses nationwide have shuttered Catholic parishes and schools, sold hospitals and closed nursing homes as the Catholic Church tries to manage with limited resources and waning dominance amid greater competition in American religious life.
Catholic schools, especially those in older, industrial regions, are grappling with a financial crisis brought about by several factors: plunging enrollments as families choose to send their children to more modern, high-tech secular schools; the growth in tuition-free charter schools; mounting benefits costs; and financially troubled parishes that don't have extra money to prop up parish schools.

Some dioceses are trying to recover from the fallout and financial repercussions from the Catholic clerical abuse scandal, in which several parochial teachers and principals were accused of sexually abusing students.

Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino tried to defuse the tension in his diocese in a letter to diocesan members in February. He wrote that, far from violating Catholic principles, he was ensuring that Catholic schools, vital to the ``promotion of the Catholic faith,'' would endure. ``Parents make significant financial sacrifices to obtain a Catholic education for their sons and daughters," Bishop Martino wrote, adding that it is his job to "establish the requirements for Catholic education and to see that they are accomplished in our schools."

Still, some Catholic school teachers say it is ironic they can't band together, given a history of union sympathy that includes Pope John Paul II's support for Poland's Solidarity movement and Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891. Written during the Industrial Revolution, it supported a living wage and union protection.

Church leaders "preach and march with farm workers and textile workers, but when our workers are trying to organize, they fight them," said Rita Schwartz, president of the National Association of Catholic School Teachers.

Fewer than 40 of the U.S. church's 194 dioceses have a bargaining unit. Lay teachers began replacing many nuns in the 1960s, and some teachers tried to organize. Today, nearly 96% of the nation's 160,000 Catholic school teachers are lay workers, and many face unpredictable employment as parochial schools in older regions flag.

Bargaining associations have sprouted despite court rulings that federal labor laws do not extend to church schools. Only New York, Minnesota and New Jersey cover Catholic-school teachers under state labor laws or the state constitution. Without such protections, unions can thrive only where bishops recognize them.

Many teachers' associations have had to fight to get recognized, and several have met their demise after years of operating. Last year, a Vatican court upheld St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke's 2004 order declining to negotiate with an elementary-school teachers' association. Teachers there said his decision was unfair, given that the archdiocese recognized high-school teachers and cemetery workers' unions. In 2004, the Archdiocese of Boston stopped recognizing a decades-old union representing more than 200 high-school teachers when the bishop reorganized the schools to make them financially independent of the diocese.

Unions without state protections have been unable to appeal such moves. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that schools run by a church where theology and academic subjects are taught aren't subject to the National Labor Relations Act. The high court hasn't taken a case since that might lead to nationwide labor coverage under federal law. Lawyers say many churches would, no doubt, vigorously fight such a step, viewing government involvement as an illegal entanglement in church affairs.

Scranton diocesan officials stopped recognizing the 27-year-old parochial teachers union in January after reorganizing the Catholic schools, removing them from the auspices of local parishes and closing several. The diocese said it would no longer bargain with the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers, which says it represented about half of the 700 teachers. Instead, the diocese selected teachers for what it called an employee relations program, in which "employee councils" would suggest any changes in wages and benefits. The diocese is under no obligation to abide by the suggestions.

The diocese says that in the past six years, enrollment at its schools in several of its 11 counties has slid by a third. Student tuition -- $2,700 annually for elementary school, $5,000 for high school -- covers less than 60% of the actual per-pupil costs. In addition, the diocese says its four regional school boards, with a projected budget of $49 million, have a $2.4 million deficit.
Despite the financial issues, furious Catholic school teachers and students walked out of the Scranton diocese schools and picketed, blasting the bishop in letters to local papers. The teachers union asked that churchgoers withhold their donations.

Leading the protests was teachers union President Michael Milz of nearby Wilkes-Barre. In June, the 33-year classroom veteran was one of eight teachers laid off. "You've got hypocrites like our bishops that do not practice what they preach,'' said Mr. Milz, who earned $61,000 annually. The union's lawyer said he is still considering the option of a lawsuit over the scuttled contract.

The decision not to rehire Mr. Milz next school year was based on the need to shed people in his social-studies department, said Bill Ginello, a diocesan spokesman. Mr. Milz, he said, "was not targeted and not fired in any way" and had less seniority than others in the department. Mr. Milz said he had more seniority than other teachers in the system who were retained.

Diocesan officials bristle at the way some locals have portrayed them. "We're not antiunion," Mr. Ginello said. "However, a union is not the only way to assure the dignity and fair treatment of your employees." The diocese says that under the union there was a pay and benefits disparity between different schools in the diocese. It promises that the new program would provide consistency in wages among teachers, as well as aides, administrators, office workers and others not previously represented.

Last month, state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, a Catholic Democrat from Wilkes-Barre, proposed giving teachers at religiously affiliated schools state labor protections. Fifty lawmakers -- about one-fourth of Pennsylvania's General Assembly -- signed on to the bill as co-sponsors. Hearings should start in the fall, he said.

Bishop Martino has blasted the bill, signaling a legal fight to come. "Teachers and staff in Catholic schools are not mere employees, but ministers in advancing an important mission," a statement on the diocesan Web site says. Such a law would create a "type of church-state entanglement [that] would provoke a constitutional confrontation of the first magnitude."

Some Catholics say they are worried about the long-term effect the fight will have on a diocese that is fast losing members to old age and better job prospects elsewhere. "What the bishop failed to realize is, he has engaged in a self-fulfilling prophesy," said Bob Wolensky, a sociologist and Scranton native who has written several books about Pennsylvania labor. "By denying the teachers this right and closing the schools, he has eroded additional support for Catholic schools and therefore the Catholic church."

Write to Suzanne Sataline at suzanne.sataline@wsj.com