Employment at Will and Roman Catholic Social Teachings: A Study of Employment Praxis in America

This theology of the workplace investigation uses a criterion-predictor approach to assess current U.S. Roman Catholic "employment-at-will" (EAW) legal practice against Roman Catholic Social Teachings (RCST) for justice in the workplace. The first step "problematizes" EAW precedent using recent labor law historical scholarship indicating, domestically, U.S. case law precedent reflects a very deliberate post-Civil War effort by corporation law scholars to restrict employment opportunities of recently freed U.S. citizen and thus all other U.S. private sector workers as industrialization proceeded. The comparative post-World War II Japanese receipt of functionally identical labor legislation and subsequent path dependent divergence from EAW for social justice offers exogenous alternatives. Roman Catholic Social Teachings then clarify and focus the point of data analysis where employment practice is assessed against criteria RCST. The data section summarizes findings from an ongoing 2014 – 2023 longitudinal population study of publicly available employment data from all 160 diocesan and 34 archdiocesan websites of the U.S. Roman Catholic church. Comparative employment policies of other nations and national Roman Catholic conferences, particularly that of Australia, join with Japanese history to indicate viable conformity to RCST norms for social justice in employment that include: a continuing employment relationship, just cause dismissal protections, labor union support, and employee participation in managerial prerogative. The discussion includes a practical sample text for implementation of RCST in the U.S. workplace, incorporating RCST and Japanese norms for RCST evangelization of culture and the restitution of employment in justice for all private sector U.S. citizens.