Scranton Catholic Teachers into second year of labour dispute with Bishop – no end in sight

The following article appeared in the Canadian publication, Tomorrow's Trust, A Review of Catholic Education, January 26, 2009:

Written by John Borst on January 26, 2009 – 4:58 am

Scranton Catholic Teachers into second year of labour dispute with Bishop – no end in sight

Saturday, January 24th, 2009 marked the first anniversary of the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers (SDACT) being unilaterally shut out of their schools by the Scranton Diocesan Bishop, Joseph Martino.

To mark the occasion about 200 supporters, many from regional union locals joined a noon rally outside the Bishop’s residence to mark the one-year anniversary of the fight to unionize local Catholic school teachers.

Each marcher wore green and black arm bands. “Black was to represent mourning,” said SDACT president Michael Milz, “while green symbolizes hope.”

One sign of hope was the presence of Democratic legislators from the cities of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, state Reps. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-Wilkes-Barre, and Kevin Murphy, D-Scranton. They announced that they will reintroduce House Bill 26. The bill would amend the state’s labour relations law to include employees of religiously affiliated schools.

Last year Pashinski introduced House Bill 2626 which amend the Pennsylvania Labour Relations Act to cover Catholic school teachers, giving them the chance to get the Labour Relations Board to force the diocese to hold a secret ballot vote among diocesan teachers on unionization. The Labour Relations Committee held two hearings on the bill, but no action was taken before the House recessed, effectively killing the bill in committee, hence the reintroduction as Bill 26.

Bishop Martino’s reaction was to up the rhetoric and threaten in a Saturday statement that if forced to accept a union “Make no mistake about it, if HB 26 passes, it will mean the end of Catholic schools in the Diocese of Scranton, costing local communities $73,880,400 each year to educate these students.”

Charles Schillinger of the Scranton Times reports:

Michael Milz, president of the teachers union, said the statement is not surprising, the tactic is not new. He said the diocese previously said the bill would bankrupt the diocese.

“That kind of rhetoric is despicable. That’s a typical union-busting approach to scare people away from the union,” Milz said. “We’ve been here for 30 years and we’ve never put the diocese in a financial situation where it would not be able to afford to pay (its bills).”

“Who would make demands that would put themselves out of work?” he added.

Pashinski, the main sponsor for House Bill 26, said he expects the bill to get out of committee “within weeks” and he was optimistic about it passing the state House. But neither Pashinski nor Milz showed that same amount of optimism for the bill passing the state Senate, which is dominated by Republicans.

“It’s a monumental task, getting legislation passed,” Milz acknowledged. “It’s Democrats who tend to be pro-labour.”

Diocese spokesman Bill Genello said the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference and other religious organizations and private institutions are expected to lobby against the bill. The diocese, in its statement, also said the bill would damage religious freedom and “grant a governmental agency the right to examine Church doctrines and religiously-based disciplines.” “The authorization of that type of church-state entanglement would provoke a constitutional confrontation of the first magnitude,” the statement said.

However, the diocese failed to say that the States of New York, New Jersey and Minnesota have such unionization laws in place to protect Catholic teachers and their dioceses have yet to be bankrupt by them and no one is claiming that religious freedom is damaged nor government interference in “Church doctrine” has occurred.

Interestingly, under the alternative “employee relations program” created by the diocese a year ago, just a week ago (January 15, 2009), the diocese announced it had recorded a $7 million deficit in fiscal year 2008, nearly half a million dollars more than the deficit it recorded the previous year.

This is no doubt exasperated by a November 2007 payout of $3 million to settle a sex abuse case claimed by a man who said that as a teenager he was sexually abused by one of its priests.

Martino is also in dispute with many parishioners over the closure of a number of parish churches, in particular the historic Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Perhaps it is little wonder he is still a million dollars short of his annual appeal.