Oren Cass, formerly of the Manhattan Institute and now of American Compass, is a public policy thinker I respect. I may not agree with everything he says — for example, he’s willing to make peace with a “secular conservatism” to attract today’s young and religiously disaffiliated — but I especially like what he writes about the renewal of work in America. I have always found it strange that we have not had a more robust Catholic conversation in this country about work, not just a discussion for USCCB policy wonks but also for the average Catholic. We need it.

When Solidarność burst upon the scene in Poland in 1980, it did not come from nowhere. There had been a long conversation in Catholic circles in Poland about the nature and meaning of work. Long before he stood out as a bishop and leader of resistance, Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński made his name as a young priest-scholar who wrote Duch pracy ludzkiej [The Spirit of Human Work]. That work, which argued for a positive understanding of the value of work, appeared in Poland in 1946 — right after the War. It took until 1995 to appear in English (as All You Who Labor, though it found its way into Spanish in 1958).

Wyszyński was not alone. Karol Wojtyła turned the concept of “alienation,” a key Marxist notion, on its head: man’s fundamental alienation is not from the things he makes but from his fellow man, of which his relationship to products is but a symptom. Wojtyła brought that theology of work to the universal Church through his encyclical, Laborem exercens. And there were plenty of other philosophers and theologians of work: Teodor Kubina (in the 1920s!), Czesław Strzeszewski, Józef Majka, Jerzy Gałkowski, Józef Tischner, et al. And the school of thought intensified in the 1980s with, for example, Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko. Why? Because Poland was ideologically imprisoned in the communist camp and communists claimed to be the sole legitimate interpreters of “work” and the “worker.” The Church challenged that monopoly.

While America’s situation is different, its capitalist culture also lays down certain assumptions about the nature and meaning of labor and laborers, some of which are compatible with Catholic social thought and some not. Particularly since this country is often an economic model for others and is undergoing its own transformation in the area of work and economics, some Catholic reflection on those premises seems warranted. Cass, who is neither Catholic nor perhaps even especially religious, has contributed to that effort with his 2018 book, The Once and Future Worker. 

I mention Cass today because he reposted on X a piece (here) by Brad Pearce about how a company that invested in eastern Washington state created good jobs that helped bring prosperity to that area. What caught my attention was Cass’s comment in his repost: “Want reliable electricity? Build reliable jobs!” while discussing “the success of… making things in America.”

The current spat over U.S.-Canada tariffs and Ontario’s threat to surcharge electricity exported to New York and Michigan might catch the eyes of some people focused on the immediate news cycle. I’m a more long-term guy, which is why I advocate you read Pearce’s article.

SEL, the company in question, sought to harness the best of technology to make electrical generation more efficient. But company president Edmund Schweitzer was not content with using technology to make profits and minimize labor. He created a company ethos that viewed workers as partners and created benefits and programs that created manufacturing jobs, built employee-employer loyalty, and helped this region. To do that, one must avoid ideas of short-term profit-taking and zero sum relations with one’s workers. That is so different from the hollowing out of the American manufacturing base (and the middle-class jobs it provided, especially for non-college educated employees) across the U.S. Rust Belt.

Read Pearce’s piece for a different perspective on how American business can (and must) include the worker, who needs, wants, and should have reliable, not just junk, jobs.

That said, while obviously Cass couldn’t say everything in a tweet, having “reliable jobs” also presupposes some other things Americans need to address: First, the idea that work is normal, good, and should be done. Particularly in the post-COVID environment, there arose a mentality that work was alien to “personal fulfillment.” Good Catholic theology recognizes that work is part of human fulfillment; work and life may need balance, but they are not antimonies. And part of that realization was underscored in President Donald Trump’s executive order that demanded those parts of the workforce still on “out-of-office” status to get back to the workplace. We should have a discussion of the pros and cons of turning the home into the workplace and whether it is good for the worker to be alone.

Second is the idea that not working is bad and generally should be stigmatized. Yes, I understand there are people who because of family situations or disability may be unable to work. But the default position I think we have lost is that people should be presumed as needing to work until proven otherwise, not the other way around. Leftist thought has tended to criticize “stigmatizing” not working and maligned “workfare.” We need to overcome those mistaken views.

Third is the idea that we should hire for competence. Now, I’m not saying that everybody should necessarily come with the full panoply of skills an employer wants at the top of their game. Seeing how hard it is for young people to get jobs, especially first jobs, we need also to recover a sense of employer training responsibility. My point is other: After the distortions of the “diversity, equity, inclusion” enterprise (and its various mutations in “affirmative action,” “reverse discrimination,” “priority hiring,” etc.) we have lost the fundamental insight that being able to acquire, refine, and master work skills is the primary employment criterion in which successful workers can and should take pride. What ought to matter is what is in an employee’s head and hands, not his pants or pigmentation.