KLC

Labor Law I
Atty. R

Thoughts on Laborem Exercens

Reading Laborem Exercens, the 1981 encyclical written by Pope John Paul II, gave
me a unique perspective on viewing work and the resulting labor-management
relations concerning it. At this point of my legal studies, the view I have of such topics
would be what I learned mainly from salient points of Corporation Law and the Law on
Obligations & Contracts. Hence, it seemed to me quite odd that as soon as I would
begin with studying in the field of Labor Law, our class was assigned this Catholic
work. The value of assigning this work to us came clearer to me after I read the whole
document and gave it a day to linger in my mind. Here are the following excerpts I
found endearing.

“Man's life is built up every day from work, from work it derives its specific dignity,
but at the same time work contains the unceasing measure of human toil and suffering,
and also of the harm and injustice which penetrate deeply into social life within
individual nations and on the international level. While it is true that man eats the
bread produced by the work of his hands xxx, it is also a perennial truth that he eats
this bread by ‘the sweat of his face’”.

The above elegantly explains the ubiquity of work in everyone’s lives. Of how
work can have a dual capacity: on one hand seen as a means of uplifting lives, and on
the other as a means to shackle and bind people. I recall in my former work as a
recruitment specialist the tears of joy my candidates have after I told them that they
passed the interview and would be receiving job offers. Grown men and women, total
strangers to me, but with glimmer in their eyes sharing how their work would now be
their means to help provide for themselves and their family. On the other hand, I have
also seen how the detrimental effects of too much work. Corporate ‘slaves’ who are
tasked by their to work overtime without pay (derisively called as ‘OT thank you’)
under pain of receiving an unfavorable performance rating by year-end.

“It is not for the Church to analyze scientifically the consequences that these changes
may have on human society. But the Church considers it her task always to call
attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which
that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide the above-mentioned
changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”
 Pope John Paul II here carves out the scope and extent as to which he intends the
Church to involve itself in these issues. It is a clever move as, of course, the Church is
not a labor organization. Nevertheless, it did teach me that more than just labor &
management, the parties to create an effective and just labor environment in a country
should also include societal stakeholders, such as the Church, the regulatory agencies,
NGOs, and the general public. A current case in points would be the unanimous
support by society for the rights of our frontline medical workers to receive just benefits
in light of the recent CoA reports showing alleged anomalies within the DOH and
Philhealth.

“There is no doubt that human work has an ethical value of its own, which clearly and
directly remain linked to the fact that the one who carries it out is a person, a conscious
and free subject, that is to say a subject that decides about himself. the primary basis of
the value of work is man himself, who is its subject. This leads immediately to a very
important conclusion of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined
for work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man" and not man "for work"”

It was in reading the last line that I grappled with difficulty to reconcile it with
the Adam Smith/Peter Drucker concept that the raison d’etre of a business is to gain
profit. And that both labor and capital would be merely the means by which to obtain
such profit. This is aggravated by the fact of the emergence of labor-saving devices such
as automation, AI, chatbots, and the like, which can prove the contrary notion that work
is “now for the robots”. I admit that on this last point, I do not have yet a sufficient
answer. And I hope to be able to find an answer and do so in the course of studying the
subject.
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