Wellness & Well-being Highlights June 23rd
Wellness & Well-being Highlights
for the
Week of June 23rd, 2025
This week’s edition of our Worker Wellness & Well-being blog looks at how when it comes to health insurance, women frequently pay more but get less—to Job Corps students are fighting back against the US-DOL’s June 30th total shutdown—to how young adults are taking up relaxing pastimes (i.e., knitting, etc.), often referred to as Granny hobbies, as escapes from technology. This week I would like to take a closer look at Pope Leo’s view of workers and AI.
As a former business representative for a construction trade union and a practicing Roman Catholic, I became very interested in seeing how the new Pope would continue the good works of his predecessor, Pope Francis. A big part of my curiosity I can attribute to an old friend and arguably one of the best labor history professors to teach in the St. Louis region, the late Dr Lon Smith. Over three decades ago, Lon was the one who explained the importance of Pope Leo XIII as the Pope of the workers. In a time of the Industrial Revolution, the former Pope Leo wrote an encyclical called, Rerum Novarum—Latin for “Of New Things.”[1] His goal was to press governments to pass laws to protect laborers…while supporting capitalism with guardrails.
Nearly 125 years later, Pope Leo XIV spoke to the Cardinals last month wherein he laid out his priorities for the first time, revealing that he had chosen his papal name because of the tech revolution. As he explained, his namesake Leo XIII stood up for the rights of factory workers during the Gilded Age, when industrial robber barons presided over rapid change and extreme inequality.[1]
And yet, it took the US another +40 years to establish national labor laws.
Today, the church offers its trove of social teaching to respond to another industrial revolution and to innovations in the field of artificial intelligence that pose challenges to human dignity, justice and labor.[1]
To this end, it is worth pondering the words of Stancati et al, “President Trump sees the Gilded Age as a golden era to which the US should return, Pope Leo views it as a warning from history.”[1]
Please check out the rest of this week’s blog: https://moworksinitiative.org/category/worker-wellness-news/
Source: [1]https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/pope-leo-ai-tech-771cca48?st=DjKoT7&reflink=article_gmail_share
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NOTE: The links provided above are for informational purposes only. None of these serve as a substitute for medical advice one should obtain from his/her own primary care physician and/or mental health professional. Please contact jgaal@moworks.org with related questions or comments.
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