Mahony’s Close Labor Ties Reflected in His Strike Role

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s intervention in Los Angeles County government’s massive public employee strike bailed out labor leaders worried about their ability to sustain the walkout, and offered clear evidence of the cardinal’s ever-deepening ties to organized labor locally and nationally.

Labor and archdiocese officials stressed that Mahony’s decision to urge a suspension of the strike by service workers was his, not the union’s, but they also described it as a welcome gift. “Heaven sent,” one said.

“This was something the cardinal decided to do,” said Eliseo Medina, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, whose Local 660 called this week’s strike, pulling thousands of county workers off their jobs. Medina would not say whether labor leaders specifically asked for Mahony’s help, but added: “We always keep people informed about a strike, and we were in contact with the cardinal’s office.”

Although Mahony declined to elaborate Thursday on his statement or its impact, a spokesman for the archdiocese said the cardinal was moved by the suffering of poor people affected by the walkout. Mahony has a long record of supporting causes championed by organized labor, and some local leaders say they have noticed a recent uptick in the cardinal’s enthusiasm for those issues.

“This is his background and concern,” said Tod Tamberg, the spokesman for the archdiocese. “It [the county strike] brought a natural response from him, in some ways a visceral response. You can’t punish people who are already hanging on by their economic fingernails.”

Urges Use of Mediator in MTA Walkout

Having profoundly altered the course of the county service workers’ strike, Mahony followed up Thursday with a foray into the region’s even more stubborn labor conflict--the 27-day-old walkout by bus drivers. Like the county workers’ strike, that standoff has had its most profound impact on the area’s poorest people, those who most rely on public transportation.

On Thursday, Mahony joined with MTA management in urging the two sides to call in a federal mediator, Richard Barnes. A mediator’s appointment, Mahony said, would help “to bring this dispute to a just and peaceful conclusion.”

In the county workers’ strike, Mahony’s dramatic intervention helped end the widespread walkout just one day after it began. Some union members were angry that the strike had folded so quickly, but others close to the talks said it delivered union leaders with a badly needed exit strategy from a conflict that had many liabilities.

According to union officials and others, labor leaders were concerned about the effect of a long strike on county workers, especially because they had no strike fund to sustain the employees, 60% of whom make $32,000 a year or less, through a long work stoppage. In addition, the people who most rely on county services generally are poor, creating an awkward public relations problem in the event of a prolonged work stoppage.

Mahony’s letter--in which he called on workers to return to their jobs, county supervisors to protect employees from retaliation and both sides to negotiate in good faith--is only the latest episode in the cardinal’s long history of labor activism. Early in his career, Mahony worked closely with farm workers and others seeking to improve working conditions for poor laborers--positions that reflect Catholic teaching’s emphasis on the dignity of work and the right of workers to enjoy a decent wage for their labors.

For the last 100 years, in fact, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the United States has generally been organized labor’s best and most reliable friend within the American establishment. The Catholic bishops have strongly supported trade unionism and its goals since Pope Leo XIII issued his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which held that workers had a moral right to a living wage and to organize and bargain collectively to obtain it.

Mahony has generally fit comfortably into that tradition, but soon after coming to Los Angeles in 1985, he angered many labor leaders with his bitter resistance to a gravediggers’ organizing effort. That left a residue of wariness between the cardinal and labor for many years, but gradually those hard feelings have receded. Since the end of that strike, Mahony’s record has been of virtually uninterrupted support for labor and the working poor.

He actively supported striking janitors this year, and he has been a leading backer of the move to adopt “living wage” ordinances, an issue on which he broke with his friend and fellow Catholic, Mayor Richard Riordan.

Recently, Mahony has been carefully nurturing closer ties with organized labor, said the Rev. Dick Gillett, minister of social justice for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

“Communication has been better in the last year between the cardinal and organized labor,” Gillett said. For example, he said that when Mahony issued an extraordinary public apology in March as part of the church’s Jubilee year observances, the cardinal alluded to the gravedigger controversy.

Without mentioning the workers by name, Mahony said he regretted “if our attitude and efforts failed to value working people and their legitimate right to seek self-organization.”

Close Ties to AFL-CIO President

When Mahony celebrated Mass on the Sunday before the Democratic National Convention opened in August, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was among those in attendance, as were Medina and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor chief Miguel Contreras.

Sweeney, whose Catholic background helped inspire his own labor activism, and Mahony have forged a deep bond. They co-chair a committee of the U.S. Catholic Conference and have co-hosted a running dialogue between labor and church leaders. On Thursday, Gerry Shea, an assistant to Sweeney, praised Mahony for his devotion to workers.

“It’s an exemplary example of the kind of stand-up leadership that we ask for a lot and frankly seldom get,” Shea said.

Although Mahony’s record on labor issues is partly responsible for his standing among Los Angeles workers, the nature of that work force is also an important aspect of his influence. Organized labor in Los Angeles is increasingly immigrant and Latino--and heavily Catholic. That has made labor and the church’s leaders natural allies.

Contreras and Mahony regularly meet and exchange thoughts on a range of issues, said Neal Sacharow, communications director for the county labor federation.

“They have a very good and productive relationship,” Sacharow said.

Sometimes, Mahony’s attempts to intervene in labor disputes run into obstacles, as they have recently during the organizing efforts of hospital workers at a chain of Catholic hospitals. This time, however--in part because the cardinal said what labor wanted to hear and in part because of the trust and influence he enjoys--the results were nearly instantaneous.

“People in the SEIU have a lot of respect for the cardinal, and that respect is very important. There’s probably no one else in that position who could have had that impact,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy--a coalition of community activists, labor unions and clergy.

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County Workers Return

Thousands were back on the job and talks continued after a one-day countywide walkout. B1