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9:44 PM UPDATE: Foss’s appeal document added, after coverage of 75 speakers at Port Commission meeting, followed by commissioners passing both motions – as Shell drillship Noble Discoverer arrived in Everett)
12:58 PM: Just as Seattle port commissioners are about to start their meeting on the controversial Terminal 5 lease to Foss/Shell, we received that photo of one of the Shell offshore-drilling rigs that is expected to wind up here for a while: The
Noble Discoverer, which, as we reported earlier, entered Washington waters early today.
Jason Mihok photographed the ND (and Foss tugs) as they passed Port Townsend – he was on board the Victoria Clipper. Meantime, we’re at Pier 69 (steps from the Clipper’s HQ, in fact), where the commission chambers are overflowing – we in fact are sitting on the floor in the back of the room. We’ll be chronicling the meeting as it unfolds.
Considered a foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching,
Rerum Novarum recognized the rights of workers to be paid a living wage and to organize almost 50 years before the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act in the United States. The encyclical s anniversary is May 15.
Speakers at the May 12 event, hosted by the Catholic Labor Network hosted, highlighted the continued relevance of
Rerum Novarum by recounting their experiences in labor organizing and critiquing efforts to quell it.
Union busting is endemic to neoliberal global capitalism, said Villanova University professor Gerald Beyer, author of This is a massive failure of the mission of Catholic higher education. It s hypocrisy that flies in the face of Catholic social teaching, and I can tell you from my own personal experience that our students notice it and our students see it, Beyer said.