Bishop calls for a ‘new social contract,’ one that honors work and workers

“A new social contract, which begins by honoring work and workers, must be forged that ultimately focuses on the common good of the entire human family,“ Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre says in a Labor Day statement issued in his role as chairman of a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“This Labor Day,” he writes, “we must seek to protect the life and dignity of each worker in a renewed and robust economy. Workers need to have a real voice and effective protections in economic life.”

Bishop Murphy emphasizes the role of civil society, which he calls “perhaps the most undervalued and overlooked” compared to the state and the market. He asks, “Could a reawakening and new development of the roles of intermediary institutions, including voluntary associations and unions, be a force to call the market to a greater understanding of the centrality of the worker?”

The statement, titled “A New ‘Social Contract’ for Today’s ‘New Things’.”draws heavily on Pope Benedict’s teaching in his encyclical, Charity in Truth. On a central point, Murphy quotes these words of the Pope: “I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity.” (Emphasis in the original.)

Bishop Murphy, as chair of the Catholic conference’s committee on domestic justice and human development, has taken the lead in describing the need for a “new social contract.” What’s next?
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Corporate social responsibility movement: Is it just a scam?

“What do we do when the entire economy becomes a Nigerian email scam?” That's the provocative question posed in an article on the Website of America magazine on August 3.

Well, one thing we should do is to recognize that the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement is itself largely a scam. The Economist has a different word for it.

“For most companies. . . CSR is little more than a cosmetic treatment,” the Economist wrote in 2005. “The human face that CSR applies to capitalism goes on each morning, gets increasingly smeared by day, and washed off at night.”

Nothing substantive has happened since 2005 to change that searing indictment. Yes, CSR has great potential. Yes, some of its corporate supporters may indeed be serious reformers, not scam artists. Yes, religious and other groups use CSR principles to pressure companies like Nike to conduct themselves accordingly. It’s a lever against firms concerned about their brand-name reputation.

But the CSR lever is weak. Overrating it is a serious error. Why? Because it lends credence to the illusion that CSR is solving the global problems of the nature described by Pope Benedict in his new encyclical and by Maryann Cusimano Love in her summary of the encyclical published in the August 3 issue.

The world economy is in crisis today because it suffers from “governance gaps” where sweatshops and other grave social and moral evils thrive. Thanks to current international law, investors and business people are privileged to operate globally under rights without matching responsibilities.

So it should be no surprise that Pope Bendict praises “the strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform” of the world’s inter-governmental institutions. He mentions only the United Nations by name but adds “economic institutions and finance,” a generic way of including other key inter-governmental organizations, especially those dealing with international trade and investment, with the World Trade Organization at the top of that pyramid.

The Pope repeatedly emphasizes, as a general principle, the need to balance rights and responsibilities. He gets very specific when it comes to two highly controversial subjects:

-- Responsibility of investors: The positive side of the reform movement already underway in the global financial system, he wrote, should be further developed, “highlighting the responsibility of the investor.”
-- Intellectual property protection: “On the part of rich countries, there is an excessive zeal for…an unduly rigid assertion of the right to protect intellectual property, especially in the field of health care.”

Just those two reforms, if adopted and implemented in international trade and investment pacts, would be major breakthroughs in globalization and in what the Pope calls “integral human development.” But both reforms are outside the stated CSR goals. Both are vigorously opposed by the business and financial community in the United States and beyond.

In fact, it so happens that rigid protection of intellectual property and investor rights are two key features of the three pending U.S. trade agreements signed by President Bush – and are also two major reasons for rejecting them. The media, Wall Street, and the Wall Streeters in the Obama administration all want the President to pressure Congress to ratify them.

Hopefully, he will have the backbone and good sense to say No we won't.

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Ten Challenges for American Catholics Implicit In Pope's New Encyclical

Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical, “Love in Truth,” like all Papal encyclicals, is not country-specific in the issues that it raises. Nor is it addressed only to Catholics. Rather, the Pope’s analysis deals with the “challenges of today’s world.” Nevertheless, many of those challenges ought to be of special concern to American Catholics, both as office-holders and as ordinary citizens of the world’s leading power.

Here is my partial list of such challenges, 10 of them, selected from among those that fall within the province of this Weblog, Human Rights for Workers. The quotes, italics included, are directly from the Vatican text.

Globalization

“The processes of globalization, suitably understood and directed, open up the unprecedented possibility of large-scale redistribution of wealth on a world-wide scale; if badly directed, however, they can lead to an increase in poverty and inequality, and could even lead to a global crisis. It is necessary to correct its malfunctions, some of them serious, that cause new divisions between peoples and within peoples, and also to ensure that the redistribution of wealth does not come about through the redistribution or increase of poverty…”

Inequalities

“The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase. In rich countries, new sectors of society are succumbing to poverty and new forms of poverty are emerging. In poorer areas, some groups enjoy a sort of ‘superdevelopment’ of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation.”

Unemployment

“Unemployment today provokes new forms of economic marginalization, and the current crisis can only make that situation worse. Being out of work or dependent on public or private assistance for a prolonged period undermines the freedom and creativity of the person and his family and social relationships, causing great psychological and spiritual suffering. I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded is man, the human person in his or her integrity.”

Role of government

“The integrated economy of the present day does not make the role of States redundant, but rather it commits governments to greater collaboration with one another. Both wisdom and prudence suggest not being too precipitous in declaring the demise of the State. In terms of the resolution of the present crisis, the State’s role seems destined to grow, as it regains many of its competences.”

Unions

“Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task in representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labor unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Chuch’s social doctrine…for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past.”


The Market and Ethics

“Efforts are needed – and it is essential to say this – not only to create ‘ethical’ sectors or segments of the economy or the world of finance, but to ensure that the whole economy – the whole of finance – is ethical, not merely by virtue of an external label, but by its respect for requirements intrinsic to its very nature.

Rights and Duties

“Many people today would claim that they owe nothing to anyone, except themselves. They are concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people’s integral development. Hence, it is important to call for a renewed reflection on how rights presuppose duties, if they are not lo become mere license.”

Intellectual property protection

“On the part of rich countries there is an excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to protect intellectual property, especially in the field of health care.”

Investor responsibility

“Both the regulation of the financial sector, so as to safeguard weaker parties and discourage scandalous speculation, and the experimentation with new forms of finance, designed to support development projects, are positive experiences that should be further explored and encouraged, highlighting the responsibility of the investor.”

The Environment

“The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, toward future generations, and toward humanity as a whole.”
* * *
To repeat: that’s my list of 10. There certainly are other challenges that demand attention, but 10 is a nice round number, and for a blog this posting is already overly long.

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A Pope Speaks Truth to Power, But Who Listens?

In formally signing his new encyclical letter on June 29, Pope Benedict XVI said that it will return to social themes expressed by Pope Paul Vl in his encyclical “On the Development of Peoples” (Populorum Progressio) four decades ago.

That should mean that Benedict’s document, to be released July 7, during the summit meeting of G8 powers in Italy, will raise controversial issues about globalization, as Paul VI did about development. The new encyclical, Caritas in Veritas (Love in Truth), promises to be an eye-opener.

In Pope Paul’s 1987 assessment, healthy development embraces both economic and social progress. The separation of economics from “human realities” is unacceptable and results in a wide range of evils.

Among them are the “flagrant inequalities” not just in wealth but also in power among individuals. Instead, the goods of the earth should flow freely for all. All people have the “right to glean” what they need from the earth. To that basic right, “all other rights whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated.”

In support, Paul VI quoted the words of St. Ambrose:

“You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone."

Paul VI condemned “certain concepts [that have] insinuated themselves into the fabric of human society. These concepts present profit as the chief spur to economic progress, free competition as the guiding norm of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right, having no limits nor concomitant social obligations.”

“This unbridled liberalism,” he added, “paves the way for a particular type of tyranny, rightly condemned by our predecessor, Pius XI, for its results in the ‘international imperialism of money’.”

For Paul VI, “trade relations can no longer be based solely on the principle of free trade, unchecked competition, for it very often creates an economic dictatorship. Free trade can be called just only when it conforms to the demands of social justice.”

Just because a poor country has signed a trade deal with a rich country does not make the agreement legitimate. “When two parties are in very unequal positions, their mutual consent does not guarantee a fair contract; the rule of free consent remains subservient to the demands of the natural law.”

In his closing summary of the crisis “in all its dimensions,” Pope Paul wrote: “The moment for action has reached a critical juncture.”

That appeal was soon forgotten. If Pope Benedict returns to Pope Paul’s principles and applies them to globalization, will he receive a more positive result? Will his analysis and counsel find a place on the G8 agenda? Or on the agenda of the Catholic hierarchy of the United States?

The full text of Papal encyclicals, past and present, can be found in several languages on the Vatican website (www.vatican.va), which has a superior search engine.

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