If you’ve ever eaten at a university dining hall or at an airport bar or in a corporate cafeteria, you have relied on the labor of thousands and thousands of people whose work often goes unseen. Our guest today spends his own working hours fighting to make sure those food service workers are paid fairly and have access to good benefits and safe working conditions.

Chuck Hendricks is the food service lead director for UNITE HERE, a labor union in the US and Canada that has about 300,000 active members. Chuck is also the board president of a group called the Catholic Labor Network, which promotes the cause of workers and Catholic social teaching in labor unions, parishes and other organizations.

It was really fun to welcome Chuck into our Washington, DC, studio to talk about his work, his history with organized labor, and how his spiritual journey led him to the Catholic Church. You may or may not be familiar with the Catholic tradition’s deep history of supporting worker’s rights and unionizing. Back in 1891, Pope Leo XIII published the first modern papal encyclical on social justice issues. It was called “Rerum Novarum” and it emphasized the rights of workers in the wake of the often-dehumanizing Industrial Revolution. In his service with the Catholic Labor Network, Chuck has found a holistic way to support workers by practicing his faith. We think you’ll really like getting to know him and learning about the contemporary labor movement.

"I came to the Church because the Church came to the workers" by Chuck Hendricks: https://catholiclabor.org/i-came-to-the-church-because-the-church-came-to-the-workers/

The Catholic Labor Network: https://catholiclabor.org/

AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, which is a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.

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