Catholic Social Thought on Unions: A Response to Baird

I am very grateful to Charles Baird for his generous engagement with the challenges to his framework for unionism in my first essay. It is always a pleasure to have a principled interlocutor on this topic and one who adopts a friendly tone. A review of Bairds engagement and his arguments has clarified where we are of one mind, and where, I think, there remain differences on what the two of us believe Catholic social thought is teaching on unions. I will argue below that these differences emerge from what we perceive to be the overall thrust of Catholic social teaching on issues related to the economy and the state and, more particularly, what we view to be the primary purpose of labor unions.Brian Dijkema, "Catholic Social Thought on Unions: A Response to Baird," Journal of Markets & Morality 17, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 533-538