Endorsing a student employment union

In an opinion piece published last week in The Record, SJU junior Logan Gagnepain remarked that, “throughout [his] years on this campus, [he has] participated in many of the departments that offer student employment.” He has worked for Dining Services, the mail center, custodial and currently Residential Life, departments which provide services for all of the students on campus and touch on nearly every aspect of university life. I, myself, am the Ministerial Resident for Retreats at St. John’s University and, in addition to a living stipend which covers part of my housing expenses at Emmaus Hall, am paid $10.72 an hour. I should be clear, I am exceptionally grateful for my on-campus employment, find my work to be fulfilling and meaningful, and enjoy it and my co-workers. I am also, however, keenly aware that I am supporting myself through a graduate-level education, which is no easy feat.

My work in Campus Ministry supports the mission of the University, as does Gagnepain’s work in Residential Life and in other departments on campus. Student workers are the lifeblood of the university working community and these campuses would not and could not function properly without the veritable army of working scholars giving their time and energy. They do this on top of their studies and social lives—both of which ought take precedence for them as college students in a living and learning community. The Catholic Church teaches that each worker is due, as a matter of justice, a living wage. Paragraph 2434 of the Catechism, which defines the “just wage” is reproduced below:

“A just wage is the legitimate fruit of work. To refuse or withhold it can be a grave injustice. In determining fair pay both the needs and the contributions of each person must be taken into account. Remuneration for work should guarantee man the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for himself and his family on the material, social, cultural and spiritual level, taking into account the role and the productivity of each, the state of the business and the common good.”

Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages.

As a Catholic, Benedictine community committed to the values of dignity of work, respect for persons and the social teaching of our Church, it is the duty of the university to pay student workers a wage which permits them not only to survive the experience but also thrive in this environment. It is a matter of justice that student workers be paid enough to support themselves without incurring undue hardship. It is also the dogmatic teaching of the Church that laborers have a right to unionize, as is enumerated in this selection from Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, promulgated by Pope Paul VI and the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in December of 1965:

“Among the basic rights of the human person is to be numbered the right of freely founding unions for working people. They should be able truly to represent them and to contribute to the organizing of economic life in the right way. Included is the right of freely taking part in the activity of these unions without risk of reprisal. Through this orderly participation joined to progressive economic and social formation, all will grow day by day in the awareness of their won function and responsibility, and thus they will be brought to feel that they are comrades in the whole task of economic development and in the attainment of the universal common good according to their capacities and aptitudes.”

As a student at the School of Theology and a worker in Campus Ministry at St. John’s University, it is in firm solidarity with the student workers of CSB/SJU that I echo Gagnepain’s call for a union, with the goal of attaining, not only for ourselves but also for those who follow after us, a just wage for our labor—labor which is the firm foundation from which the life of this university community springs forth.