Abe Lincoln, And John Paul II, Rightly Honored Labor

E. J. Dionne Jr at The Washington Post notes that these historical figures and moral leaders were also friends of labor.

So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”

That’s what Pope John Paul II said (the italics are his) in the 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens.” Like Lincoln, John Paul repeatedly asserted “the priority of labor over capital."

And as someone whose first job at the Journal Sentinel was labor reporter, I winced when I read this Dionne paragraph:

Once upon a time, a lively band of labor reporters covered the world of work and unions. If you stipulate that the decline of unions makes the old labor beat a bit less compelling, there are still tens of millions of workers who do their jobs every day. But when the labor beat withered, it was rarely replaced by a work beat.

Even more amazingly, labor in the early-to-mid-1980's was a Metro staff job, meaning labor and work was covered as mainstream news.

Then the position was transferred to the Business desk, and eventually it was eliminated.