Column Teachers appeal for fair deal in St. Louis
By JEANNETTE BATZ
On most workdays, my plaid-skirted
parochial school past stays in the closet. My employer is a St. Louis
alternative newspaper famous for raising the blood pressure of conservatives.
We question the assumptions of secular power and keep our skirts (rarely plaid)
clean of most religious issues, fancying it possible to cleave church from
state even in messy social issues.
That pattern changed earlier this year when grade-school teachers
in the St. Louis archdiocese took up picket signs for the right to unionize.
They wanted better pay and benefits (salaries start at $16,890 and seldom reach
the vaulted $32,530 ceiling). They also wanted an objective grievance policy
and more say about their working conditions. None of this seemed
unreasonable.
But panicky archdiocesan officials, not least Archbishop Justin
Rigali, were refusing blankly. They offered what to outsiders must have seemed
like a Catholic Zen koan. Although the archdiocese issues centralized salary
guidelines and personnel policies, and pastors feel bound to obey them, the
elementary school system was not centralized, archdiocesan officials said, and
therefore the teachers could not do collective bargaining.
This issue wasn't religion, my editor reasoned, it was the
workplace rights of 2,400 teachers responsible for shaping the minds of 44,282
children in Missouri's oldest, largest and probably most trusted school system.
Furthermore, the problem had national scope: Because of divisions of church and
state, Catholic school teachers did not have recourse to the National Labor
Relations Board, so they were uniquely vulnerable. Look into it.
And so, on Holy Thursday morning, I found myself standing on the
gray stone steps of the New Cathedral, notebook poised. Below on the sidewalk,
the picketers -- some holding babies or their husband's hand -- walked a long
loop. Above, school kids in zigzag lines waited to enter the cathedral. (One of
their teachers assured me she'd be marching, too, except she had to get her
students to the Chrism Mass.) Near the heavy wooden doors, I saw what looked to
be a monsignor. Taking a deep breath, I approached him.
And lost my nerve. Instead of asking tough questions about the
teachers' rights, I asked him why the kids were there. They were this year's
confirmation class, he told me, and we chatted about changes in the sacrament
since my own school days. I felt like a prisoner with the Stockholm syndrome,
way too eager to impress the authorities.
Back at my desk, the questions came more readily: Why had the
archbishop refused to meet with the teachers? Why had the education board
refused their proposal for task forces to study this issue? Why had the
archdiocesan newspaper refused to sell them an ad?
How could collective bargaining be structurally impossible when,
according to Rita Schwartz of the National Association of Catholic School
Teachers, some 35 to 40 U.S. dioceses already recognize some form of collective
bargaining? How did a wage of $16,890 for a single parent of three reconcile
with the 1996 U.S. Bishops' Pastoral Letter on the Economy, which urged the
church to practice the same social justice it preaches?
Catholic elementary school teachers inherited their "vocation"
from nuns vowed to poverty and 1950s wives looking to supplement their
husband's salary and be home in time to fix supper. Today, many of those
teachers are single, divorced, widowed or supporting children. "My God --
excuse my language -- isn't teaching enough of a sacrifice?" one of them asked
me. "I feel like a church mouse, scuttling around in a dark church squeaking,
and the friar, out of the kindness of his heart, throws a crumb.
"We are not mice. We are humans. And we teach the future Catholics
of this community."
As the chronology unfolded, I began to understand the anger
burning in the teachers' voices. Last spring, they organized the Association of
Catholic Elementary Educators, which soon had more than 950 members. In
November, the teachers' association proposed two archdiocesan task forces, one
to study the possibility of collective bargaining, the other to study the
possibility of funding increased salaries and benefits. After maneuvers worthy
of a corporate boardroom, the archdiocese informed them that collective
bargaining would not be included in any task force's discussion.
The teachers rolled up their sleeves.
They picketed the archbishop's residence. They demonstrated
(before service, never during, they kept reminding me. "We're Catholic too!")
They asked parishioners to put their annual development appeal contributions in
escrow until the archdiocese recognized their association. They even affiliated
with the Carpenters and Joiners union, part of the AFL-CIO. But through it all,
they kept asking for a meeting with Rigali for an open discussion of the
issues, an honest attempt at reconciliation.
The archdiocese's response was simple: Collective bargaining was
structurally impossible; financial times were tough; and improving the
teachers' salaries and benefits would necessitate closing schools and raising
tuition costs. Eventually, they offered the association two representative
seats on a special commission to study the issue. Collective bargaining was off
the table, so the association refused. Case closed.
Trying to understand how educated people of goodwill who shared a
common faith and common goals could reach such an impasse, I found myself
listing the flashpoints:
First, years of feeling unappreciated, unheard, not included in
any real decision-making.
Second, the superior working conditions of the archdiocesan high
school teachers, whose union had been acknowledged three decades ago and whose
salaries were higher.
Third, the unfortunate, bumbling explanation that those superior
conditions were necessary to attract and keep male teachers for the coed high
schools. (Nearly all the elementary teachers are female).
Some of this, I must admit, was exhilarating. I was hearing pure
feminist rage from women who, in my own school days, had hushed us nervously
and risen (almost genuflecting in reflex) whenever the pastor entered the room.
"Times have changed," veteran teacher Anita Schumaker agreed. "You've got women
now that are sick of being told what to do by these men and not even consulted.
We are not the wimpy little Catholic schoolteachers we used to be."
Unfortunately, the hierarchy was still the hierarchy.
Communication followed gravity, falling vertically.
Priests of various religious orders wouldn't comment; it wasn't
fair for them to speak on a diocesan matter. Nuns wouldn't talk; as former
parochial school teachers, they didn't feel they should get involved.
Archdiocesan priests wouldn't comment; they had vowed obedience to the
archbishop. Priests called Robin Heimos, president of the teachers' association
-- anonymously, however -- whispering their support.
"This is a manifestation of a much more fundamental shift,"
murmured one priest -- "the laity taking their proper place, finding their
voice in the church." Unfortunately, he added, "there is no overall structure
yet" that allows a graceful sharing of power and ideas.
Habits of thinking die hard. When I turned in the story, my editor
asked why on earth some flexible, custom-designed collective bargaining
arrangement couldn't be made. I tried to explain the hierarchy, the tradition,
the order and coherence that are the church's greatest strengths and
weaknesses. "These are parish schools," I repeated patiently. "A Roman Catholic
pastor rules his parish -- and obeys his archbishop."
Well, couldn't designated pastors serve with archdiocesan
officials on a collective bargaining team? I opened my mouth for an answer and
realized I had none. I'd never even considered such a thing. Catholicism is not
a team sport.
In some dioceses, even the teachers think they can't organize,
notes Schwartz of the Catholic teachers' organization, who has been working on
this issue for 30 years. "I explain to them that indeed, the Catholic church
champions the right to organize" -- she rattles off papal encyclicals,
episcopal documents and canon law. "But in terms of federal and state law, we
still leave our civil rights at the schoolhouse door."
Last month, things looked pretty bleak. But last week, I called
association president Heimos for an update. The story hasn't ended, but the
impasse has: Rigali finally met with Heimos and 13 other teachers. The
association agreed to send its president and vice president to the commission
after all. And when they arrived at the first meeting, they were handed an
agenda that included collective bargaining.
After that Holy Thursday demonstration, I saw our Jewish
photographer looking wistfully at the cathedral doors. "I've never been
inside," she confided. "It's funny, I always visit cathedrals when I travel,
but here ... I never knew if it would be okay." I promised it would be and
guided her inside. She craned her neck at the mosaics, whispering awed comments
until a blare of trumpets signaled the start of the service. For what seemed an
eternity, all the priests of the archdiocese, robed in white, processed
straight-backed and reverent down the long aisle. Hearing Jen catch her breath,
I felt absurdly proud to be rooted in such an ordered, certain tradition.
Its greatest strength; its greatest weakness.
Jeannette Batz is a senior editor at The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis.
National Catholic Reporter, May 9, 1997
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