Waterfront Priest: the Church and the Union

In my childhood home we had a book, The Waterfront Priest, on Father John Corridan S.J., whose defense of workers’ rights on the NY waterfront was later portrayed by Karl Malden as Fr. Peter Barry in On the Waterfront. In that cinematic masterpiece, street-tough Terry Malloy (Marlon Brandon) is torn between the values of the Catholic reformist priest and the corrupt, mob-ruled longshoreman’s union of Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb.) That riveting drama provides an illuminating model for understanding the tense, troubled relationship between Catholic and union values in 2008.

That book was a gift to my father from the Jesuit St. Peter’s Labor School in Jersey City, where he taught Catholic labor principles from the viewpoint of a union activist. His involvement as a Catholic labor man was emblematic of the close, fruitful relationship between Church and union in those days. Unions were full of Catholic ethnics and were closely mentored by priests inspired by papal social teaching. These were fighting for control on two fronts: against mob corruption and leftist radicalism. For the most part, the fight was largely successful and the Church-labor relationship was, in the 1950s, one of mutual infatuation. In a Catholic labor family such as ours, the union was a quasi-divine institution closely engaged with the Church herself and dedicated to fighting dark, greedy forces of corporate greed. The honeymoon simplicity, clarity, and felicity enjoyed in that working class, urban, ethnic Catholic cocoon was not to withstand the changes of the 60s. In that era, Church and union took different directions and now face each other like Johnny Friendly and Father Barry battling for Terry Malloy’s soul.

As son of a union organizer, I always took pride during my career at UPS (5 years as a teamster myself, almost 20 in supervision dealing with the union) in my company’s pro-union philosophy, even as I endured the fierce, combatative tensions between company and union. But my first personal experience with the union was not pleasant. During my trial period as a package car driver when I was trying to earn my 30-day union book, I would come early to work and spend a few minutes of my own time previewing the packages on my truck since I was new to the routes and areas. I was not represented by the union but trying, with some urgency as father of three at the time, to become a union member. The shop steward threatened that if I continued working for the company on my own time, I might be thrown off the truck. Later, in supervision, I had occasion to “brown up” and drive past a railroad picket line (our own union drivers would not do so) in order to retrieve packages from the striking rail companies. At that time I experienced the violence of a picket line. It was not a pretty sight. This was the darker side of the union movement.

In UPS, management and teamster leadership both worked their way up from the ranks so that between the company and union there was no class distinction, but a realistic and wary knowledge and suspicion of each other. A hard-driving, demanding, stress-maximizing corporate climate evoked an angry, defensive, belligerent union reaction, especially in areas like NY/NJ. Union pressures rose to countervail company demands. Tension and anger were, however, always regulated and directed by “The Contract.” This is an eminently sensible way to do business. In my years as dispatcher, I was very happy to work with the shop steward who would let me know immediately if I violated the contract (about things involving seniority like overtime) but defend me against unfair driver grievances and complaints. I lost my naiveté and illusions about the union movement and came to see company and union as equivalent morally: both fundamentally good institutions, equally prone to greed and distortion. Union members were no more morally superior to management than management was to labor leadership.

In the broader social context, however, the union movement increasingly aligned itself with the cultural liberalism on issues like abortion and gay marriage. These should, of course, have remained extrinsic to bread-and-butter economic issues of wages, benefits, safety and job security. But within the umbrella Democratic Party, the union movement came to endorse abortion and the entire ethos entailed. So, for example, in the 2003 contract agreement with GM, UAW leadership attempted to include coverage for abortion as a benefit. They attempted to do this on the sly, without submitting it to the democratic approval of the membership. To President Gettlefinger’s chagrin, word of the innovation was leaked and a pro-life reaction crushed the initiative. It is telling that the social engineering was attempted as an anti-democratic, elitist coup, much like the successes of our activist judiciaries in imposing their liberal cultural agenda. This specific case of worker pushback against the cultural liberalism of the union elite is, unfortunately, an exception. In general, the union continues to live“in sin” with feminist and gay militancy within the Democratic Party.

During these same ending decades of the 20th century, our seven children were attending a parochial school system that was increasingly stressed by the decline of the teaching religious orders. Parochial schools were switching into lay hands and their economic survival, in lower income communities like our own, required some form of tax credit or voucher for families choosing parish schools. Here we find the second anti-Catholic initiative of the union movement. The teachers’ unions, with support of the entire Democratic alliance, became the Number One enemy of financial relief to parents supporting two school systems. In some urban areas, a majority of public school teachers send their own children to non-governmental schools; yet, the unions remain militant against parental choice in education.

And so, an observant Catholic today typically finds himself aligned against his own union on two important issues: abortion and education. This brings us to a more recent issue: the union advocacy of “card check.” As my father and uncles knew so well, our law requires a secret ballot election about unionization after organizers have gathered signature cards requesting such election from 30% of a company’s employees. The new “card check” procedure, advocated by the unions and endorsed by President-elect Obama, would dispense with the secret ballot and grant union certification as soon as union organizers get over 50% of employee card signatures. This is an open process in which organizers know who has signed and who has not. Confidentiality is voided. There is no privacy. This is a problem. Most elections, from President of the nation to home room representative, are secret ballots to protect the confidentiality of the elector. Generally, a person should be able to vote his conscience or preference without public scrutiny and vulnerability to coercion or retaliation. The unions on this issue allege subtle coercion and manipulation by business as a pretext for exposing the worker to greater vulnerability.

The union movement is turning towards the dark side… as it did on the mob-run docks in the 40s and 50s and could have with the Stalinists in the 30s. Plagued with the same gigantism of bureaucratic government and global capitalism, it has aligned itself with both, through the Democratic Party, in an agenda hostile to the Church’s values on innocent life, sexuality and marriage, the education of our young, and the confidentiality of voter choice. These are bad days for the labor movement.

There are only two divinely created societies: marriage/family and the Church. The first preceded the Fall; the second is heaven’s antidote to the Fall. Along with government, military, police, business, and private property, the union is an inherently good institution in accordance with human nature in a fallen world. As such, it is reactive to evil and itself tends to corruption and perversion. Especially in our complex, globalized society, we need these institutions to countervail and correct each other. More importantly, as Catholics, we need to scrutinize them as to how they enrich and support the more primal and foundational values expressed in the family and Church.

By this reading, the union movement is in sad shape today, especially by comparison with the glory days of our fathers in the 1950s. The Father Corridans and Laracy brothers of that time were triumphant over the Stalinists and the mobsters even as they countervailed corporate interests on the part of worker’s rights. Our generation has not done as well.

However, the battle continues. In a capitalist world, the Catholic will always support the union; even though the unions have turned against the Church and the values and interests of their own members. Terry Malloy took a terrible beating from Johnny Friendly on that dock; but he walked away bloody and victorious.