The status of the clergy as office-holders “must not be used to place increasing demands and expectations on clergy without offering reciprocal support structures and accountability of those making the demands”, the chair of Church of England Clergy and Employee Advocates (CEECA) has said.
The Revd Sam Maginnis, who chairs CEECA, part of Unite the Union’s Faithworkers’ Branch, is the Team Vicar of Horsham. He was responding to a letter in today’s Church Times requesting a discussion about “whether parish priests really are ‘office-holders’ with less job security than most secular workers, or whether it is a convenient management fiction”.
The letter, from a parish priest who requested anonymity, lists working conditions for the clergy, including: working “on average longer hours than most employees”; being “canonically obliged to remain within certain forms of wording in carrying out certain duties”; and being “compulsorily subject to both a draconian disciplinary system and a system of particular action outside that system without any appeal or redress rights”.
Read it all.The status of the clergy as office-holders “must not be used to place increasing demands and expectations on clergy without offering reciprocal support structures and accountability of those making the demands”, the chair of CEECA has said https://t.co/Zh6JBVTnv1
— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 3, 2024