NAME: (IRISH) ARLENE PEREZ-CABALUNA PROFESSOR: PROF. CEASAR BILLONES REFLECTION: “LABOREM EXERCENS” (On Human Work) An encyclical by Pope John Paul II in 1981, trying to make clear as much as possible, the development of the Church teaching…while celebrating the 90 years since the publication of the Rerum Novarum… Its focus is on the dignity of Human work in the contemporary world… For 90 years…the issues on Labor and employment remains the same…nothing much has change…the triangle was still standing as it is before…the wide conflict and the gap between the rich and the poor is still a problem… Throughout the years…there is still the conflict between labor and employers, and the church, again and again keeps on repeating its principle of the priority of labor over capital…and constantly reminding us that “everything that is at the service of work is the result of work.” The Government tries to formulate, develop and revised laws and codes on labors…so as to fit with the considerable change of work from the Industrial Revolution to the present Innovations and Technological advances…yet, despite all these human efforts…there is still that lack of respect for “the dignity of Human work” with regards to the treatment of laborers, by some companies and employers… As before…and still at the present times, the focus of the companies or of the employers are still the “output”… to gain more profits…envisioning themselves to be “a competitive one and a leader” in their field of expertise…to amass profits while minimizing costs… thereby putting the value of labor out of their heads…treating them as an object and not as humans who have also the same dignity, given by God to everyone… This problems, can now be observed, in different forms and in varying degree…there are those contractual workers, who doesn’t have the security of tenure, and who are paid below the so called minimum wage, making it difficult for them, to adapt, to the increasing costs of living…there are those, who are tempted to go abroad, in the hope of uplifting the family’s economic situation, despite the threat to their health and to their life as well… and all these, are rooted, in the context of globalization…in which quite a number of people are displaced from their work, and from what they used to do for living… due to the rapid progress of technology and modernization… say for example…a great area of the farmlands are being converted to a business place or are being urbanized…and were planted with thousands of houses or subdivisions which are now sprouting like mushrooms everywhere…and then, what happens to our farmer’s now? Do they have the ability and enough skills to be employed as “whatever”? When in fact all their lives, they have only develop skills of toiling the soil? …the result is that more and more people become jobless… adding to the statistics of the number of unemployed…I guess these problem lies also in the failure of the government, to take steps, to strengthen labors ability and skills, to effectively negotiate with capital and to give primacy to work and give an active effort not just on implementing laws but to initiate a “peaceful dialogue”, so as to fix these problems… Laborem Exercens says; that the human work is the sharing in the activity of the Divine Creator…as St. Paul once said; “ Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive inheritance as your reward.” It is the job of the Church to speak out on issues relating to work to preserve human dignity and to also to form a spirituality of work to help all people come closer to God…
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 10:33:44 +0000
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