Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Labor unions and free association
Labor unions and free association
Feb 18, 2026 7:25 AM

The Service Employees International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have broken away from the plaining that the federation has focused too much on political activism in the face of declining union membership and influence.

Dr. Charles Baird was a featured guest on yesterday’s edition of Kresta in the Afternoon on Ave Maria Radio, discussing Catholic perspectives on unionism and whether the modern American labor union movement patible with church teachings. Dr. Baird is Chair of the Department of Economics at California State University and the author of Liberating Labor: A Christian Economist’s Case for Voluntary Unionism (part of Acton’s Christian Social Teaching series and available for purchase in the Acton Bookshoppe). To listen to the interview, click here

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Video: Paul Bonicelli talks Venezuela’s socialist failure on Fox Business
Acton Director of Programs and Education Paul Bonicelli appeared on yesterday’s edition ofMaking Money with Charles Payne on Fox Business Network, and spent some time talking about the current dire condition of Venezuela, and the socialist experiment that got the country there. You can view the clip below. ...
What motivates America’s new socialists?
Is America having a “socialist moment”? There are currently more people who say they prefer socialism to capitalism (37 percent) than identify as evangelical Christians (32 percent). What is driving people who don’t even know what socialism means to prefer it to free enterprise? At the Library of Law and Liberty, James Rogers says it’s risk, not redistribution, that motivates America’s new socialists: My suspicion is that most Americans still don’t resent really rich people. They may envy them, but...
Understanding the President’s Cabinet: SBA Administrator
Note: This is the post #25, the final post in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Cabinet position:Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) Department:Small Business Administration Current Administrator:Linda McMahon Department Mission:“The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve petitive enterprise and...
Samuel Gregg: ‘On that strange, disturbing, and anti-American Civiltà Cattolica article’
On July 13th, Civiltà Cattolica,a Jesuit periodical from Rome, published an article that was largely critical of American culture. The very next day, Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, responded in the Catholic World Report with an article titled “On that strange, disturbing, and anti-American ‘Civiltà Cattolica’ article.” Gregg states: This brings me to a very odd article that recently appeared in La Civiltà Cattolica: the Italian Jesuit periodical published twice a month and which enjoys a...
3 reasons economic ‘inequality’ is misleading
Society praises equality as an absolute good. Certainly, equality before God and the law are pillars of a free society. However, measuring economic equality is often misleading for three key reasons. I was reminded of this by a new Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report on e inequality in Great Britain released on Wednesday. The BBC’s headline “UK inequality reduced since 2008” typifies the media coverage. However, the study reveals that much of the leveling came about because the wealthiest...
Radio Free Acton: Chris Armstrong on medieval wisdom; Upstream on Monterey Pop at 50
On today’s Radio Free Acton we share an interview from Acton University with Chris Armstrong, Wheaton College Professor and author of the new book book Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C.S. Lewis. We take a look at the difference between modern and medieval Christians, and examine what makes a good story. Then we talk with RFA Chief Cultural Correspondent (and newly minted mentator at Forbes) Bruce Edward Walker on the 50th anniversary...
Approaching climate change at Acton University
Jay Richards lecturing at Acton University How should we respond virtuously to the issue of climate change? During his lecture at Acton University on June 23, Jay Richards wrestled with this question before a nearly packed room. Richards is an author, assistant research professor in the School of Business and Economics at The Catholic University of America, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and executive editor of The Stream. During his talk, Richards outlined four questions that he thinks...
NBC’s Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly profiles Boys’ Latin Charter School
In June, Sarah Stanley, managing editor of Acton’s Religion and Liberty, wrote an article onBoys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School. Her piece, titled “Every man is the architect of his own fortune,” interviews the co-founder and CEO of Boys’ Latin, David Hardy, who started the school in 2007 with the belief that teaching Latin and enforcing a strict code of conduct could provide a better future to young men from munities. He was largely correct. NBC’s Megyn Kelly recently used...
Crisis in Europe calls for a ‘creative minority’
Recently at Acton University, Samuel Gregg opened his lecture “Benedict XVI and the Crisis of Europe” by diving into the etymology of “crisis.” es from the Greek word krisis, which marks the point at which an illness has reached its peak. This peak is a turning point; it is the moment when the sick will either recover or die. Gregg claims that Europe is in a state of crisis. He outlines three major characteristics of its illness in order to...
Deirdre McCloskey’s case for ‘humane libertarianism’
In Deirdre McCloskey’s latest book, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, she adds a hearty layer to her ongoing thesis about the sources of our newfound prosperity. In an age where Left and Right seem intent on focusing merely on the material means and ends, McCloskey reminds us of the underlying forces at play, arguing that such prosperity is not due to systems, tools, or materials, but to the ideas, virtues, and rhetoric behind them....
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved