Fired! Do church employees get unemployment benefits?

The predominant paradigm for employing the NON-ORDAINED remains the American NUN of the pre-Vatican II era: get as much work out of them for as little money as possible. No wonder bishops are licking their chops over all these whimple-wearing gen x'ers allegedly flocking to novitiates these days...only in this day and age, they will sadly discover that "you get what you pay for!"

In my experience (and I have had personal experience with this, as well as experience watching people close to me put through the wringer by the church), the church and its institutions quite frequently violate social justice teachings by denying unemployment benefits to former employees.

I chaired the theology department of a Catholic college in North Carolina in the early 1990s. After I was given a one-year terminal contract with no explanation, I appealed to the school's grievance committee to be given a reason for the termination.

When the president refused to provide a reason and I found myself rebuffed and lied to at every turn as I sought a hearing, I resigned. I could then have drawn unemployment benefits for a limited period of time under NC law. They would have been minimal.

When I applied for them, this Catholic college sent a staff member to the unemployment office to block my attempt to draw the meager temporary benefits, on the ground that I had resigned and not been fired. I had just begun to provide care for my mother at the time. She was elderly and suffering from dementia, and could not care for herself. The upheaval in my life caused tremendous difficulty as I sought to give the best care possible to my mother, while suffering from unemployment.

In another case I know about, a lay person teaching theology at a Catholic seminary in the U.S. taught for five years at a salary of $15,000. This was in the latter half of the 1980s.

When he came up for tenure review and the faculty and students voted for him to be tenured, the seminary rector unilaterally denied him tenure, claiming that he could not pay a lay person's salary any longer. The next year, he hired two priests to replace this faculty member.

When my friend was terminated, he discovered that all retirement benefits the archdiocese had put into his tiny retirement fund were reabsorbed. The termination occurred at the end of the spring semester, when it was very difficult for this person to find another job in the next academic year.

The rector who treated my friend this way was subsequently made a bishop and has now been made an archbishop.

In my experience, what the church teaches in the area of justice, it quite frequently does not practice. As a result, it loses many of us who cannot live with the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality.

Unfortunately, most bishops do not believe in justice, as is evidenced by the fact that they do not participate in unemployment voluntarily. I've known several people, especially musicians and directors of liturgy and music, who have been fired from their church jobs without cause and who have no recourse. And in some cases, they weren't even given the decency of a notice. Just came into work and were told they were fired that day.

The church needs to practice what it preaches - justice!

Eleven employees were terminated at our Parish so the Pastor can fund a $0 million dollar capital campaign. They get two weeks severance pay for every year they worked. One staff member was 4 months away from being vested in the pension plan.

I lost my position as a Pastoral Associate one year ago. Since I am in my late fifties, I was not able to land another full time position. The church needs to set up an unemployment fund for workers if they do not pay unemployement taxes. All discharges should be reviewed by a Human Resources professional to see if the the documentation warrants discharge. Most priests are not trained in fair employment practices.

I also feel that it might be time to form a church employee organization that would provide assistance and help those unemployed. If the church were a regular organization, there would be management tools to determine appropriate staffing levels, disciplinary steps, etc. But I am told that the church is neither a democracy or a business.

Just a few of my thoughts after a year of consideration. Good luck and God Bless all who are unemployed as a result of the church.

There's more to this story. Churches are also exempted from COBRA requirements. Some dioceses have established "medical continuation " policies, which enable laid off employees to continue in the diocesan health plan at their own expense for 18 months, similar to the way COBRA works (# of months can vary.) BUT, the provision in the economic stimulus package that helps laid off employees pay up to 65% of their COBRA costs does not apply to these medical continuation policies, so former church employees are left with the full bill, to be paid out of their unemployment check, if they get one.
I am in this situation myself. I get about $600. per month from a private unemployment policy the diocese has. My medical insurance is $725. Go figure.

Even if your diocese as a "human resource" person on staff, as well as a detailed personnel handbook that outlines protections and procedures for employee rights, don't believe for an instant that they are worth the paper they are written on.

My wife was a school secretary who received nothing but glowing annual evaluations until a new "office manager" was hired. To make a long story short, at the end of her new supervisor's first year, my wife received her first evaluation that was not only negative, but horrible. On top of that, the evaluation was oral (before both the principal and office manager), not written, as per diocesan requirements.

She followed the diocesan personnel handbook to the letter and submitted a written response to her evaluation, plus a formal request for a grievance hearing. She was fired two weeks later.

I can nod in assent to all of the comments made above. The violations against justice by the official Church are too numerous to even count. And the tragic thing is that---often the reasons for firing lay (and religious are not exempt either) often are based upon the whims of those in charge.

Some friends of mine were involved in ministry at a local parish. One was a religious who was the Pastoral Minister the other was a married woman (mother of three) who was the DRE. Both had excellent records in their parish. And there were other staff members involved in this matter, too.

But when the new pastor came on-board, he wanted to transplant all (most) of his former employees (from his old parish) to his new parish. He made the most impossible demands of his current employees (working late to 10:00 P.M. on week-days, working on holidays (even Christmas was not exempt). The point was he wanted the people to resign---then they couldn't apply for severance pay (which was nothing to write home about).

Two staff members quit---no serverance pay for them. And as they were in their late fifties---they were stuck just as one anonymous writer described her/his situation. The nun stuck it out---so the pastor fired her (told her he couldn't afford her salary as meager as it was). But she got a severance pay---three months at regular pay and then the next three months at half that amount. She was hired at a new parish in less than a month after she was 'let go.' People knew about her abilities and grabbed her up.

The DRE held on as long as she could (her husband and grown son were ready to take the pastor out and 'beat the crap' out of him because of some of his demands on the DRE). Eventually, she landed a job teaching in a Catholic high school in another diocese---and she quit.

The pastor? He did indeed, lure away from his former a good number of his old staffer and gave them the other staff members positions. And the parish where he had been had to scramble to find new staffers.

Justice---is something that is merely preached and written about by our bishops--it is not practiced. The last pastoral that they wrote extolling the qualities and work of the laity was in 2005 "Co-Workers in the Vineyard". It has not meant a thing as far as protection on the work-place, as far as any kind of universal policy permitting fair and just treatment of these "Co-workers" from the official church.

And if these folks try to unionize (a practice also encouraged by the encyclicals of some of the popes), the local ordinaries engage in 'union-busting' practices (like Bishop Martino of Scranton, PA). And the laity is fired and it is impossible to even get decent letters of reference to apply to new jobs.

One writer above had experienced loosing her/his job as a Pastoral Associate. There is no recourse because he/she was told that the "Church is not a democracy or a business". But the very reasons that there are so few monarchies in the world today, is because the people could no longer tolerate the very same ideas that our Church leaders hold today. People overthrew their governments and established democracies, democratic republics, or even constitutional monarchies (England)---so that the people would have more guaranteed rights.

The official Church really needs to have an extended 'examination of conscience' when it comes to how it treats its employees. And it must have a 'firm purpose of amendment' that is carried out in practice.

I was very disturbed after reading this article. I've worked in several parishes and Catholic schools as a Youth Minister, Director of Religious Education and Campus Retreat Director for the past 14 years and it never occurred to me to check to see if they were paying unemployment insurance. I foolishly assumed that the Church cared about its staff- it's one of the reasons I chose to work for the Church and gave up a decent salary for a wonderful, caring environment.
I checked with the finance assistant yesterday and she said that the parish I currently work for DOES pay unemployment insurance- it's about $1.75 a month per employee. It's probably a good thing since we are considering 'laying off' an employee since we are in such financial difficulties. We've all taken furloughs, cut medical insurance benefits, cut holiday pay and vacation pay, we've cut summer sessions for adults, youth and children as well as summer RCIA sessions and have stopped matching 403B contributions, but we are not even sure we will make payroll this month without tapping into emergency savings. (we can't really take pay cuts since most of us make nearly minimum wage)

And when all those voice of the faithful people keep encouraging people to stop donating, guess who loses their jobs? The laity. Good job guys!

I think the respondents to this article are being a bit short sighted. They seem to be surprised that Bishops and Priests can be so callous in their treatment of employees and so uncaring about the repercussions of their decisions. But in reality consider that most of these gentlemen never worked a day in their lives. They live pampered lives. They don't have to support a family , feed and educate their children. It isn't that they don't care. it's that they just don't understand.

I am in that situation right now. My position was eliminated due to budget cuts and I have been unable to find another position.

I worked for 13 years for one diocese and took a position in another diocese 9 months ago. Unfortunately, because I did not work for the new diocese for a full year I am not eligible for their transition assistance program.

One of the marks of the Church is that the Catholic Church is one, however, in practice the Church acts as though it is many.

Some years ago I worked at the US Dept. of Labor. Lawyers for the US bishops, all well paid, came to us wanting to import nuns from Spain for a Philadephia Catholic hospital. Why? So they could be paid as little as possible and deported if they made waves. This despite Rerum Novarum, Quadragesino Anno, etc. The bishops pay lip service to the Catholic social justice teachings of recent popes. But, like the corporate executives they are, they ditch such social justice teachings if it costs money -- though spending tens of thousands of dollars every year of the peoples' money on thrmselves to travel for USCCB events and committee meetings, trips to Rome, to "network" at new bishops' installations, etc. And no one holds them accountable, even the USCCB. This is what's to expected in a medeival, nondemocratic. royalistic governing system. A self-perpetuating system since the laity are deliberately disinfranchised despite the "people of God" rhetoric of Varican II.

3 and 1/2 years ago, I moved my family to a new town to become a Music and Christian Education Minister at a Baptist Church. Our move involved the selling of one home and the purchase of another and well as our 3 sons moving to a new school. In May 2009, I was ask to meet with the Personnel Committee on a Tuesday night. Apparently a plan had been put into plan several weeks earlier to rescind my position and to enact a "reduction in Force" due to an decrease in giving and lack of revenue. This action was effective immediate. I was given 6-weeks severance pay, even though there was financial trouble in the church.

After the 6-weeks of severance, I applied for unemployment pay and found out that Alabama churches did not have to pay for this insurance. I tell you this to say that an employee of a church should be informed that there is no unemployment pay and they employee should have options available to them.

Without a job and no prospects of one in the near future, I am now forced to apply for welfare and food stamps. Twenty five years of my life in church service is now minimized to the embarrassment of standing in line at the unemployment office and at the welfare office every week, and going out everyday begging for any job I can find. God's servants should never have to face these situations.

Well now... it seems quite clear to me that there are more than ample grounds for two responses here:

1- A class-action lawsuit or two.
At least One to challenge higher court rulings that have granted churches and religious institutions rights with regard to treatment of church personnel that violate the basic rights of the citizens that work for them. This has nothing to do with the exercise of their religion and should not be exempted from following state and federal labor laws.
Is there a lawyer out there who will take our case?

2- As the man said, "don't mourn, organize!" I know that a parish in Texas once organized a union affiliated with the UFW. I don't know what came of it (it didn't get much coverage anywhere.... geee I wonder why she said sacastically) but it was the right thing to do then, and is most definitely time to do it on a national scale now.
Any one have advice as to how to go about something like that?
When I was in seminary, the joke among us women was a longing pipe-dream about a day when all the women who work for the church stayed home. Maybe it is time to advance from dream to reality... and bring along all our variously mistreated brothers as well!

It is not just Church personnel who experience this lack of justice. Others, who have worked for various nonprofits serving the poor and the ill (agencies who are also, depending on state law, not required to pay into the unemployment system) have laid off professionals in the past and failed to pay benefits. My empathy and prayers are with all the writers above.

It has been a long time since this happened to me, but I clearly remember the shock of working for a small, private "nonprofit" employer, and discovering that there were no unemployment benefits! Since I had young children at home to partially support, I, too, thought it was ironic that here we were, helping others, but there was no provision for us! (As I recall, I think there was 2 weeks severance pay.)

That was a long time ago, and hopefully that would not happen now, but some State Laws are written with loopholes actually for the purpose of protecting certain "small businesses" that are not so "small"! They seem to incorporate with "nonprofit" status, and reap the benefits!

I have, myself, seen workers taken advantage of, in the name of "helping others", while using Federal Funding, with the top administrators making what seemed to be more than decent salaries, while the workers who interacted with the poor sick homeless people were paid minimum wage,(sometimes they were unaware or barely recovered themselves), and sometimes very poorly trained. Yet most of them tried, although because of the pittance they were earning, their morale was extremely low. This was exploitation at its worst. The workers tried to form a Union--hurray for them---and Management was forcing me to do everything to oppose it---I couldn't--my heart was not in it. I finally left because I realized I could not change anything, and it was sickening, although it was scary because I was older and jobs were very hard to come by.

The workers did not understand the sympathy I felt, and someone called me "a joke". This hurt. But I suppose when one is working at cross-purposes with oneself, one does take on a clownish persona. What is that saying about "what does not kill me makes me stronger?" I have gotten very strong along the way to old age, I guess!

The Diocese of Richmond is to be applauded for its efforts to straighten things up, and for caring for its employees. I hope they can firmly and objectively follow through, so that disasters such as those explored by other writers above may be avoided.

HR is sometimes a perilous "jungle" but much good can be accomplished for people if due diligence is followed and the HR person truly studies and learns proper and lawful procedures. I worked as a professional in the Employee Assistance field for awhile and we dealt with HR Departments all over the Country. That was a great privilege, to interact with managers and supervisors,in the secular corporate world, many of whom (on all levels) honestly cared about, and wanted the best for, their employees. I would so much love to see that kind of personal love (like the love that Jesus talks about that the Good Shepherd has for each one of His lambs---it is not a distant impersonal thing--it is very personal--) That is what I experienced when talking to some of these Managers and Supervisors about their workers and employees.

This is the LOVE that Jesus HAS, NOT HAD. This is the love that should come from the Church. And through us.