In last week’s article we dealt with unions in the traditional sense of seeking employee rights with a view to ensuring that the common societal good is achieved. This week we will look at how these worker associations can ensure that they remain relevant to the changing economic and social conditions.

Employment in the traditional sense of a salaried employee who stays in one company for many years until retirement is no longer the only form of employment. Many persons work on contract, changing jobs from time to time and hence not guaranteed a pension.

There are persons who work as consultants. Business organisations are often looking for the different ways to organise the production process, which results in mergers of companies, sub-contracting work out, seeking employees as and when necessary.

How will unions survive in this environment, where they are not likely to have the luxury of a steady and consistent client base? How do they make themselves attractive to those persons who may not be working in an environment where they have the same steady income per month? Unions now are forced to re-think their positions, and reassess what they concentrated on before.

Because of the ever constant changes that face the world today, employees have to be nimble and have to be able to adjust rapidly – unions have to therefore look at programmes that will encourage the worker/their membership to make the necessary investments in training to ensure that they are able to keep up.

They have to educate members in how to plan for their future in the absence of a secured pension, and it also forces them to re-think the way they negotiate on behalf of workers – do you bargain only for increased wages, and fringe benefits.

The Compendium tells us the following:
“The modern socio-economic context, characterised by ever more rapid processes of economic and financial globalisation, prompts unions to engage in renewal.

Today, unions are called to act in new ways (L’Osservatore Romano), widening the scope of their activity of solidarity so that protection is afforded not only to the traditional categories of workers, but also to workers with non-standard or limited-time contracts, employees whose jobs are threatened by business mergers that occur with ever increasing frequency, even at the international level; to those who do not have a job, to immigrants, seasonal workers and those who, because they have not had professional updating, have been dismissed from the labour market and cannot be re-admitted without proper re-training.

Given the changes that have taken place in the world of work, solidarity can be recovered, and perhaps with a firmer foundation in respect to the past, if the effort is made to rediscover the subjective values of work: ‘there must be continued study of the subject of work and of the subject’s living conditions.’ For this reason, ‘there is a need for ever new movements of solidarity of the workers and with the workers (Laborem Exercens).

Pursuing ‘new forms of solidarity, (L’Osservatore Romano), workers’ associations must focus their efforts on the acceptance of greater responsibilities not only in relation to the traditional mechanisms for redistribution but also in relation to the production of wealth and the creation of social, political and cultural conditions which will permit all who are able and willing to work to exercise their right to work in full respect for their dignity as workers.

The gradual obsolescence of organisational models based on salaried workers in big business makes it fitting to update the norms and systems of social security that have traditionally protected workers and guaranteed their fundamental rights.

Next week we commence Chapter VII – The “New Things” of the World of Work.

Persons interested in purchasing the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, may contact the Commission for Social Justice, Archbishop’s House – 622-6680.