United Church brass reject unions

The church, known for its strong support of unions, bars the door when the organizing drive comes looking for them

by Reverand Kevin Annett

To many progressive people in Canada the United Church is synonymous with justice, liberal causes, and trade union rights. But the times they are a changin'.

On November 12, United Church General Secretary Jim Sinclair attacked the recent unionizing drive among clergy announced by the Canadian Autoworkers Union, and even risked an unfair labour practice suit by urging ministers not to join or support such a union.

"It's just not a fit" Sinclair said to national reporters, referring to unions representing clergy. "It would disrupt and harm the traditional covenant between ministers and their congregations."

When asked why he supports unions for workers outside his church but not inside, Sinclair said with a double-think agility that would impress any lawyer, "We in the United Church have always supported the right of people to join unions."

It's always interesting and even funny when the liberal mask of a big corporation like a church slips away, revealing the beast lurking within: in the case of the United Church, we see an anti-union organization with a terrible track record when it comes to working conditions and employee rights.

In 2004, nearly one quarter of all United Church ministers were on permanent stress leave, according to the church's own statistics. Reverend Casey McKibbon of the Clergy Abuse Network in Metcalfe, Ontario estimates that one-third of all United Church clergy are the victims of wrongful dismissal, and over half of them suffer some kind of overt abuse that forces them to resign.

Such arbitrary mistreatment of ministers has in fact been institutionalized in the United Church's rules and regulations. In May of 1997, the United Church General Council revised its Manual to allow its Presbytery officials to fire any minister without cause at any time, even without consulting his or her congregation.

Clergy have traditionally accepted this kind of abuse as part of their job, having been taught that their task is to be the "burden and sin carrier" for their "flock". But more than a scapegoating theology is responsible for what one minister in Vancouver describes as "the nightmare that poses as a caring religious community."

"I live under this constant threat that if I don't please the power brokers in the church, I'll be out," commented the middle-aged clergyman to a gathering of ministers in New Westminster in early November.

"There's nowhere to go with the emotional abuse thrown at me every day. The church is totally self-regulating and answers only to itself. If the power group has the ear of the higher-up officials, you're a slave to their every whim: how you do communion, the sermons you give, even how you decorate the church manse.

"If I had have known what the church puts its ministers through, I'd have never gotten ordained."

United Church ministers work an average fifty to sixty hour week for a starting wage of about $32,000 a year. That works out to roughly minimum wage for a job that is twenty four hours a day.

In response to this situation, clergy in Ontario approached the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW) two months ago and asked for help in unionizing. CAW head Buzz Hargrove immediately embraced the cause of a union for ministers, and appeared on national television on November 5 with two United Church ministers who were filmed signing membership cards with the CAW.

The movement for a union among clergy is for now a limited one. The CAW has announced its plans to negotiate with the national office of the United Church, but for now seems to be restricting its organizing efforts to southern Ontario, where nearly half of all United Church clergy are based.

Ominously, the United Church officialdom has already counter-attacked the union drive with the kind of scare-campaign that characterized its response to lawsuits from aboriginal survivors of the church's nightmarish "residential schools." Barely a day after the CAW announced the drive, BC United Church official Keith Howard sent a letter to all clergy in that province warning them not to join the union, lest the church "fall apart in division and discord."

Regardless of the success of this effort to secure union rights for clergy, the drive will surely highlight the "wolf in sheep's clothing" nature of organized religion when it comes to practicing what it preaches within its own ranks.

Can the United Church actually live the justice it calls for in the outside world? Its own clergy are putting it to that test.

Kevin Annett is a former United Church minister who was wrongfully dismissed and de-listed between 1995 and 1997. He is presently the pastor of All Peoples' Church.

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