ABSTRACT
Laborem Exercens, interpreting Rerum Novarum, offers a more robust defense of the need to strike. Repeated in Laborem Exercens, Caritas in Veritate and other papal documents, Rerum Novarum argues unapologetically that “the most important of all are workingmen’s unions”. The reason is that the institutional arrangement provided by Right to Work laws assumes that the moral basis of trade unions is an atomistic and individualist perspective on unionism. The recovery of trade unionism as a primarily economic institution is critical because it both focuses the task and work of unions, and it does so in ways normed by the goals of economic life. The political sphere itself can create a charged environment, especially when in an attempt to legislatively punish workers associations that have drifted into partisan work far outside of their mandate. This is the case in the so-called Right to Work campaigns across the United States, and to a lesser degree in Canada.
