Le mouvement patronal catholique, ses tâches et ses moyens d'action The Catholic Employers' Movement, Its Tasks and Means of Action

Sommaire

L'auteur indique ici l'apport spécifique du christianisme à la pensée et à l'activité des mouvements patronaux nommément catholiques. Il précise la qualité de la spiritualité du chef d'entreprise, qui doit réaliser chez lui une communauté de travail chrétienne et efficace. Il définit les diverses tâches dun mouvement patronal catholique. Il en décrit enfin les méthodes et les moyens d'action.

Summary

A movement is the incarnation of an idea, a doctrine; it is the expression of a concern; it has a message to deliver. A movement becomes an organization only when it has to make its doctrine more effective and its message more penetrating.

This fundamental attitude illustrates the difference which exists between, on the one hand, purely industrial employers' organizations set up in the first place, and often solely, in order to defend the industrial and material interests of their members, and, on the other hand, Christian employers' movements formed to bear witness to a Christian conception of economic life and social order.

The Catholic Employers' Movement was born out of the awakening of Christian conscience in employers. The position of employer, when exercised by those who have been enlightened by union with Christ, cannot be the same as that of a non-Christian, even when correctly exercised.

The first source of the Catholic Employers' Movement is concerned with the spirituality of the head of the business. If our movements exist, it is, above all, in order to assist business executives to seek Christian perfection in and by their economic and social positions. They have to perfect the Christian, considered as an employer.

The search for employer spirituality is essentially that: to get employers to remake the unity of their lives by recentering all their activities on their union with the Lord. The willingness of a Christian business executive to achieve deep and harmonious employer spirituality will inevitably lead him to concern himself with the problem of Christianization within his business. This is the second object of our movements and is indissolubly allied to the first. The ways in which this concern for Christianization may show itself can be manifold and quite different. The essential point is that this concern should be lively and generate action.

The business executive who faces facts will realize that this Christianization cannot come about without previously or simultaneously seeking a genuine common spirit within the business. The creation of this common spirit within the business, difficult though it is, constitutes in logical order the third object of our associations.

And this object leads us to the last of our activities: the various techniques for improving working conditions. The common spirit within the business will, in fact, be the result of numerous initiatives concretely expressing a staff policy which really respects mankind and its supernatural finality. It is for this reason that our movements must give their attention to all means which will lead to an improvement in material and psychological working conditions and to humanizing work in modern industry to the greatest possible extent. It is also necessary to see that an atmosphere is created which is suitable for spreading the vocation of God's children.

To attain these ends, our movements must employ different methods as regards business, i.e. business executives personally, on the one hand, and as regards the institutions which shape society, on the other.

It can be seen how far we are from a mere defence of industrial or other interests. It can also be seen that there is no question of conflicting competence between our movements and purely industrial employers' organizations grouping employers of a certain sector or region. Our associations are complementary to the other employers' associations. Our association must eventually enable the others to possess an increasingly large number of business heads animated by the same ideal of social collaboration. In several countries the Catholic Employers' Movement plays, in this way, the part of an animator and pioneer as regards the general employers' association. It contributes to the creation of an atmosphere in which the ordinary employers' organization can be more positively and openly receptive to social and human realities.

Does this mean that a Catholic employers' movement cannot defend any industrial or material interest of its members, or of industry as a whole? Certainly not. Our movements often have to adopt a definite attitude in face of dangers arising out of unreasonable claims or undue State control.

They do so because dangers which threaten the employers' position menace the possibility of christianizing the workers' world and creating a genuine common spirit within the business. They reject certain measures because they suppose an organization of society incompatible with the human, Christian development of all its members.

The opposition by our movements to certain measures in the social and economic field cannot be dictated merely by the desire to defend certain interests, however legitimate they may be. This opposition is justified only by reference to the targets of spiritual development and human valorization of men at their work.

Our movements are not, therefore, ghettoes of employers seeking refuge in defensive union; they are, on the contrary, a training school for Christian employers and the techniques of social promotion. They are not means for covering up an ineffective social attitude with excellent general principles; they are, on the contrary, permanently exacting, a constant reminder to take a higher view of the office we hold.

Other tasks, no less important, devolve upon our movements. They must be the concrete expression of the social doctrine of the Church, based on the genuine co-operation of all concerned at the industrial level.

Our movements are, and must increasingly be, interested right from the start in anything concerned with the training of welfare workers, the creation of welfare services within firms, personnel departments, vocational training services, workers' housing, workers' savings campaigns, the application of a family policy, the setting up of compensation bodies and the granting of family benefits, the creation of co-operative societies, assistance to affiliated heads of business and, more recently, various schemes for the heigher training of business executives. In all these domains and in many others, the influence of the Catholic employers' movement must be determinant in the creation of suitable bodies and in drawing up fundamental legislation. As regards businesses the staff policy, its definition and execution, staff reception, information, the fullest use of committees and works councils, the constant improvement of physical and psychological working conditions, the perfection of better-known wage systems, the interesting of workers in the overall life of the business, the personal problems of young male and female workers, the elaboration and application of a genuine family policy, the problems of higher executives and lower grades, all offer Catholic employers organizations an unlimited field of action. They must not hesitate to tackle these problems technically, especially if minimum awareness can only be obtained by putting forward technical solutions.

Our movements must also influence the larger social and economic structures, through pressures on legislative and administrative bodies.

Were not our most recent intervention, however, sometimes marked by a certain negative attitude tending to safeguard existing situations? A more positive and far-sighted participation in the elaboration of new structures, expressed by a more flexible attitude, would seem to be a policy more in accordance with our fundamental principles.

It is certain that we played a considerable part in the first steps of liberal capitalism. Is it still the same today? Yet an important task awaits us the status of the firm, often breached by solutions which we content ourselves with rejecting en bloc instead of giving all our attention to those factors which lead trade-unions or opinion to advocate them, have to be remade.

Similarly as regards the "institutionalization" of the social dialogue and interest in the policy of productivity and its results, a remarkable sphere of influence is open to our organizations.

This institutional action is both structural and conjunctural — to use the economic jargon. Structurally, our organizations must make their position increasingly well-known to public opinion; they must be represented on official and unofficial committees, in party politics and everywhere where new solutions are being worked out.

Conjuncturally, they must see that they intervene at the right moment with adequate documentation and well-prepared plans. Except in certain countries where Catholic employers have set up extremely strong organizations, it must be admitted that our organizations are not in general sufficiently well-armed to be able to follow movements of opinion and current events or to intervene effectively and know-ledgeably.