I MUST FIRST THANK Michael Ray for his letter of Monday, August 31, and for the “love and respect” and “high esteem” he has had for me for almost 50 years. I hope I’ve deserved it.
Let me assure Mr Ray, and any other disappointed soul, that he misread my letter in the DAILY Nation of Monday, August 24. I certainly did not attribute the resurgence in violence to toothless unions. On the contrary, I attributed the violence “mainly, if not entirely, to our present economic model” (that is, neoliberalism) which promotes (please note: promotes”) the ideology of the market . . . , the priority of capital over labour, rampant consumerism, toothless unions, layoffs, uncertain employment, deep cutbacks in social services . . . with the resulting social dislocation, etc”.
This is so because neoliberalism is a total system and, as such, it has reshaped not only our economy but also our society, culture and personal values. Many lament this reshaping but do not realise its source. To sincerely pray for a “humble and contrite heart”, or for the blessedness of “meekness” and a “hunger for justice”, in today’s world is to pray for “failure”.
A few weeks ago, I warned: “Unions and others must realise that the internal dynamics of the Social Partnership, operating in a social democracy, are fundamentally quite different from the internal dynamics of the same Social Partnership operating in a neoliberal economic context.” Today, more that ever, we need unions that refuse to be either a department of government or an arm of the private sector.
Any country whose government and some powerful sectors of the private sector continually “pound”, humiliate and seek to render unions toothless, is a country that has lost sight of the common good and is sliding into social chaos and some form of dictatorship.
While capital and labour need each other, it is human labour, and not capital, that is made in the image of God. In this, the vocation of the Christian church is clearly very close to that of the unions.
– Fr. Leslie Lett
