Catholic Social Teaching: 

Dignity of Work and Rights of Workers

“Woe to him who builds his house on wrongdoing, his roof-chambers on injustice; who works his neighbors without pay, and gives them no wages.”

-Jeremiah 22:13

The opportunity to work to earn a living is a right of all people. All workers have the right to a fair wage, to organize themselves and to work in good conditions.

“Work is, as has been said, an obligation, that is to say, a duty, on the part of man…Man must work, both because the Creator has commanded it and because of his own humanity, which requires work in order to be maintained and developed. Man must work out of regard for others, especially his own family, but also for the society he belongs to, the country of which he is a child, and the whole human family of which he is a member, since he is the heir to the work of generations and at the same time a sharer in building the future of those who will come after him in the succession of history.”

-Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, #16 (On Human Work)