Catholic teachers union is needed

The following letter to the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader appeared on February 15, 2009:

Catholic teachers union is needed

Once again Bishop Joseph Martino has shown why the Catholic teachers in the Diocese of Scranton need a union.

An announcement about the introduction of Pennsylvania House Bill 26, which would give teachers in religious schools the same rights as other Americans, prompted a response from the bishop that would make the union busters at Wal-Mart blush.

The diocese announced that if the teachers get a union, all the Catholic schools in the diocese will close.

If any other employer did this, it would be slapped with an unfair labor practice charge and heavily fined. The teachers also were referred to as defiant – exactly the way King George referred to the cheeky colonists who demanded their rights.

This is exactly why the teachers need a real union, not the bishop’s phony employee relation council. The bishop pretends the employees have representation through the council, but he still makes all the final decisions.

After attending a rally in support of a teachers’ union, I went to Mass at my home church in Swoyersville – to which my family has belonged since my grandfather helped to build the church a hundred years ago.

While waiting for Mass to start, I couldn’t help but think how Bishop Martino has taken the diocese backward.

My grandfather was a miner and was at the rally in Scranton a hundred years ago when Bishop Hoban and Teddy Roosevelt joined to support union rights.

I was at a rally in almost the exact same place a hundred years later at which Bishop Hoban’s successor Bishop Martino is trying to take away these rights.

What a shame!

Eugene Gowisnok
Swoyersville