<b>Why Is The USCCB Selling Out Catholic Health Care Workers?</b>

June 30, 2009 - For more than a decade, Catholic health care workers have been the targeted for unionization by some of the country’s most powerful, radically anti- life union bosses, efforts that have included slick television advertising campaigns that demonize Catholic hospitals as a public health risk.

For the unions, unionization of Catholic health care workers would be the goose that never stopped laying golden eggs until it died a horrible death from exhaustion. With 600,000 health care workers in 600 Catholic hospitals, the annual money flow into union coffers could easily reach $ 500 million per year, an awfully large amount of money to push the radical, left- wing agenda the union bosses have embraced over the past few decades, an agenda which has put abortion and homosexual rights at the top, the elimination of conscience clauses for health care workers, and the cutting out of employees in any discussions between union bosses and corporate management.

In Chicago, for example, Resurrection Health Care, which employs 15,000 people at its eight hospitals, is today subject to a vicious TV propaganda campaign by the AFSCME ( American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) bosses, asserting it is guilty of thousands of health care violations, broken laws, had poor quality doctors, overcharged patients, etc. ( See the web site ResQuality. com for examples of the commercials airing.) " It is one of the most shocking, irresponsible things we’ve ever seen," Resurrection spokesman Brian Crawford told the Chi- Town Daily News’ Alex Parker. " We think it’s outrageous and we don’t see what it has to do with the union organizing."

Indeed, the ads are so potentially damaging to Resurrection it could cost many of those 15,000 employees their jobs.

Howard Peters, a senior vice president for government relations with the Illinois Hospital Association, told Parker, "This is not new stuff. It’s in the playbook."

The Chi-Town Daily News report continued: "Bill Sullivan, president of the Illinois College of Emergency Physicians, has seen similar tactics before. Several years ago, another union trying to represent hospital employees started an inflammatory Web site, and even bused in poor patients to the hospital, asking them feign illness, he says.

" ‘When I read this site, it makes me question what their motives are,’ he says."

A new statement contrived by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, along with leaders from Catholic health care associations and the unions, offers "guidance and options for creating a fair process for health care workers" to decide whether or not to force workers to join existing unions, such as Gerald McEntee’s AFSCME and Andy Stern’s so-called SEIU (Service Employees International Union).

Among the collaborators on the statement were Paul Booth, one of the founders of the Alinskyite social chaos creator Midwest Academy, and a well-known, hard left agitator, and Dennis Rivero, chair of SEIU healthcare, a disciple of Booth’s at the Midwest Academy, and who has been accused of breaking independent unions in order to corral members and their compulsory dues into the SEIU. In California, the head of SEIU healthcare is Sal Rosselli, a high profile homosexual activist who controls the dues of 140,000 health care workers in the state, a great many of them in Catholic hospitals. Rosselli publicly stated on the steps of the state capitol in Sacramento that he would guarantee that every contract with a Catholic institution would be forced to support the full homosexual agenda. As an indication of his lust for power, Rosselli is challenging Andy Stern for leadership of the national SEIU.) According to a press release issued by the USCCB’s media department: "Outlined in a new document entitled Respecting the Just Rights of Workers: Guidance and Options for Catholic Health Care and Unions, the principles reflect a unique and groundbreaking consensus between Catholic health care employers and unions and are the result of a dialogue that began more than a decade ago.

"The three-way dialogue was initiated by the USCCB in an effort to find common ground on alternative approaches for carrying out Catholic social teachings on the rights of workers to freely choose whether or not to be represented by unions.

" ‘Though they had different perspectives and points of view in many areas, the participants shared the conviction that it is up to workers — not bishops, hospital managers, or union leaders — to decide how they will be represented in the workplace,’ said Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, who chaired the dialogue. ‘This remarkable dialogue produced an unprecedented agreement because of the principles of Catholic social teaching and the quality of the leaders involved.’ "The new Guidance and Options document offers seven key principles for appropriate conduct by both employer and union representatives that will help ensure that employees are able to make an informed decision without undue influence or pressure from either side. The document suggests that unions and employers agree, in writing, on the specific ways they will: • demonstrate respect for each other’s organization and mission, • provide workers with equal access to information from both sides, • adhere to standards for truthfulness and balance in their communications, • create a pressure free environment, • allow workers to vote through a fair and expeditious process, • honor employees’ decision regardless of the outcome, and • create a system for enforcing these principles during the course of an organizing drive. " ‘This approach depends on civil dialogue between unions and employers focusing on how the workers’ right to decide will be respected,’ said Bishop William Murphy, Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and a dialogue participant. ‘By placing workers at the center of the process, the group affirmed the core of Catholic Social Doctrine.’ "Guidance and Options does not bind individual bishops, hospitals or unions. Rather it offers principles and practical alternatives for leaders of Catholic health care and unions who want to avoid the tension and conflict that often accompanies organizing drives. More than 600,000 employees work in nearly 600 Catholic hospitals nationwide. "It took more than two years to reach agreement on the new principles, which build on the recommendations of an initial working paper issued in 1999 by the USCCB Subcommittee on Catholic Health Care and Work. In December 2006, the USCCB reconvened leaders of Catholic health care and unions to develop additional, practical guidance for achieving the recommendations in the original A Fair and Just Workplace paper.

" ‘Because Catholic Health Care is a ministry not an industry, how it treats its workers and how organized labor treats Catholic Health Care are not simply internal matters, but should reflect Catholic teaching on work and workers, heath care and the common good,’ said Cardinal McCarrick."

"The bishops and the leaders of Catholic health care, with this understanding, have taken an important step in affirming the right of workers to join a union if they so choose," said AFSCME President Gerald McEntee. "This is a positive step toward ensuring that Catholic health care facilities provide both quality care for patients and a fair and just workplace for employees."

McEntee, who received a degree in economics from LaSalle University, is a member of the Democratic Party National Committee.

Behind the boilerplate, the buzzwords, the lies, and the misrepresentations of the USCCB press release, the truth is that these union bosses, with whom the bishops and top USCCB officials and CEOs of Catholic health care associations which pretend to represent Catholic hospitals, have been among the most ardent funders and supporters of the "culture of death politicians," most notably Catholic pro-abortion legislators such as Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, etc.

These union bosses, and the politicians they support, moreover, have worked diligently to defeat any prolife legislation or ballot initiatives, such as the parental notification initiatives in California, Props. 73, 85, and 4, as well as the marriage initiative Prop. 8.

All Americans, especially Catholics, need to understand that the union bosses of today are not your grandfather’s union steward, just as the Democratic Party is not that of your grandfather’s day. Today’s union bosses, having been trained in the Alinskyite strategy of creating social chaos as a prelude to a socialist state, are not about representing employees. They are about seizing power and wealth in order to pursue their hard left, anti-life program.

In cases where AFSCME and SEIU have unionized health care workers, employees have had so-called "security clauses" imposed on their contracts, which require the employer to terminate any worker who conscientiously objects to generously funding the union’s anti-Catholic culture of death politicians and political goals with his or her wages.

In effect, these "security clauses" are backed by the full authority of the USCCB.

In addition, the SEIU’s Andy Stern’s "corporate strategy" of running massive blackmail campaigns against hospitals, for example, which resist his demands to deliver the workers and their wages to his organization, continue, and are in gross violation of any notion of Catholic social teaching. It would be like an Italian pastor encouraging his parishioners to pay protection money to the local Mafia don.

Andy Stern’s tactics were described in an April 15, 2008 article in the Huffington Post by writer Jamie Court: "Hundreds of Service Employee International Union (SEIU) staff and members stormed a progressive union gathering in Dearborn, Michigan this Saturday — dispensing injuries, bruises and split heads to conference-goers at a Labor Notes magazine strategy session. Today AFL-CIO President John Sweeney spoke out against the violence and called upon SEIU president Andy Stern to repudiate it too.

"Stern’s at the center of the controversy (in part recently covered by The New Republic and by the SF Weekly)

because he seeks to crush resistance to his ideas in all corners of the labor movement. He has led SEIU into dangerous agreements with nursing home owners that seek to keep elder abuse quiet and prevent liability for it. He’s pioneered similar ‘partnerships’ with Kaiser to keep caregivers from speaking out about problems inside the HMO. His brand of unionism is geared toward building membership numbers by giving employers what they want: sheep who listen to, not agitate against, the HMO bosses, nursing home owners and other corporate shepherds. . . ."

Another contemporary union practice in efforts to unionize a hospital, or other organization, is to force an agreement with management without an election. This is now the union’s number one legislative goal. The unions want to do away with secret elections for workers to determine representation, and replace it with a "card check-off" procedure.

This allows the union bosses, and their sympathizers, to pressure employees, one by one, to sign cards without a clear understanding of the consequences, and when a sufficient number of cards have been obtained, the union announces victory, and the workers have no right to change the outcome or have a say in a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election. H. 1409 and S. 560, known deceptively as the Employee Free Choice Act, would actually eliminate employee elections to determine whether or not to join a union.

The USCCB’s Faustian deal with the AFSCME and SEIU and their minions, masquerading as an implementation of Catholic social teaching, has enormous implications and consequences for the Church’s 600,000 health care workers and the Catholic faithful.

As in any Faustian deal, the devil wins in the end.

As many commentators have warned over the past several months, President Barack Obama’s plan to "reform" health care and bring it under the complete control of "culture of death" bureaucrats, who will guarantee that abortion, embryonic stem cell research, birth and death control, etc., are fully integrated into every nook and cranny of the so-called health care system, and any vestige of conscience rights or religious scruples are extirpated.

If the bishops believe that Catholic health care can exist in this brave new world, they are naive beyond any excuse.

At a time of shrinking financial resources and an aging population, Catholic health care workers — plundered and exploited by union bosses they have not chosen — will see their conscience rights denied, as wages and benefits decline, under government mandates to control and lower the cost of health care.

The question that needs to be asked, in view of this latest document, and the pending disaster which it will help implement, is why haven’t the bishops and their bureaucrats helped the Catholic people and health care workers in forming unions and associations that truly do represent Catholic social teaching and respect for the essential moral teachings of the Catholic Church, instead of the diametrical opposite?

It is high time the U.S. bishops rejected their own USCCB "union" and form a new union that will represent authentic Catholic moral and social teaching.

Reprinted with the permission of The Wanderer, Paul Likoudis, author.