Boston Labor Guild: The hyphen in labor-management relations

FATHER ED BOYLE, S. J. of The Labor Guild

“The problems we face, we face together. Or they won’t be solved at all,” proclaimed Archbishop (later Cardinal) Richard Cushing in 1945 when he founded the Catholic Labor Guild. Many things have changed in the past sixty years (not the least of which was a name change to the more inclusive The Labor Guild), but the Archbishop’s words still reverberate and serve as the organization’s guiding principle.

Perhaps best known for its annual Cushing-Gavin Awards, which honors individuals from labor, management, and legal counsel, the Guild today serves as a conduit between labor and management to promote communications and improve relations. Jesuit Priest Father Ed Boyle, 74 and a 35-year veteran of the organization, directs the Guild, the only organization of its kind in the country. Based in Weymouth, it serves the Greater Boston area.

Changes through the years

“Historically, we’ve maintained a low profile,” Boyle says. “We shift the focus to labor and management. Our role is to act as a facilitator.” It wasn’t always that way, however. In the 1940s, the Guild focused exclusively on labor—specifically Catholic laborers. But in the 1960s, the Catholic community saw its members assume more management and professional positions. At the same time, Vatican II encouraged Catholics to be more open to people of different faiths.

While it is still run under the auspices of the Archdiocese, the Guild evolved into a non-denominational organization and expanded its mission to include management. So why isn’t the organization called, “The Labor-Management Guild?” “We’ve considered that. And we may yet change it,” says Boyle. “But The Labor Guild name is so familiar, we’re reluctant to tinker with it.”

While it may be challenging in today’s economic climate to bring things like pensions and healthcare benefits to the table, both labor and management have a vested interest in making them work. As Boyle sees it, the overriding goal of the Guild is to ensure that both sides remain in communication with one another. Among its services, the organization makes a negotiation room available to labor and management representatives, offers networking and consulting, issues the newsletter, “Labor Life,” and publishes “Your Rights on the Job,” a highly regarded guidebook about employment laws. The Labor Guild’s oldest continuing program, and its best-known and most-respected initiative alongside its awards dinner, is its evening School of Labor Relations. Now in its 60th year, the school has provided labor education for more than 30,000 workers, including more than 50 international union presidents and all the presidents of Massachusetts’ state labor councils since WWII.

Plumbers provide a model

The Guild works with a range of industries, including utilities, telecommunications, and publishing. The construction trades, Boyle believes, provides a beacon for all labor relations. “I’m impressed by the spirit of cooperation and collaboration between labor and management in the building trades,” he says. “I believe that labor-management relations for Massachusetts plumbers, and the state’s entire construction industry, is the best in the U.S. It’s based on integrity and a spirit of mutual accommodation.”

Boyle says that the building trades understand the joint responsibility that both parties must take for successful labor-management relations. Management needs to look at things like wages and benefits, but labor needs to consider things like productivity. “I think unions have stepped up and taken ownership of the process. They realize if their members are going to have decent living wages, they need to work hard.”

Among its founding members, plumbers have a long history with The Labor Guild. The organization has honored many industry representatives at its Cushing-Gavin Awards ceremony including Kevin Cotter, Business Manager of Local No. 12, and Tom Sullivan, the retired Executive Director of the PHCC of Greater Boston.

Looking to the future, Boyle says that the Guild will maintain its basic mandates of justice and decency for workers, but will continue to adjust its sails to catch the prevailing winds. Among his plans to help navigate the often-choppy waters, Boyle is trying to get other faith communities involved in labor issues as well as encourage the business community to be more ethically responsible. “We need more of a moral voice in our economy,” he says. For 35 years, labor and management have been looking to Father Boyle and The Labor Guild as key moral standard-bearers.

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