PROMOTION. — An Italianized English word, frequently used to signify the advancement of workers both in the technical-professional sense (the scale of classifications from common laborer to skilled and specialized worker), and in the economic-social sense of remuneration, that is, of well-being and position in society from the standpoint of culture and responsibility (team leader, department head, factory manager); as well as access to the professions.
Promotion responds to criteria of justice and charity, according to which the advancement of the working classes should be supported by the other classes, and to criteria of general interest, because the continual contribution of new elements is an indispensable condition for the continuity of the governing classes, which wear out more rapidly and find it more difficult to replenish themselves unaided. It is also extremely useful for establishing or preserving mutual understanding among the classes.
A collective promotion is also considered, concerning the working class as a whole, in order to obtain more humane living and working conditions, and easier access to culture, material goods, the spiritual advancement of workers, and their gradual integration into the life of the enterprises themselves as participating members and co-responsible partners.
Indeed, this aspiration of the working class to enhance the abilities of every worker, according to the possibilities and nature of the enterprise, and to integrate workers gradually into the life of the enterprise, is an almost universal aspiration among workers. “The time has come,” says Pius XII, “to abandon empty phrases and to think of a new ordering of the productive forces... which will open to the working classes the path toward honestly acquiring their share of responsibility in the conduct of the national economy” (Address to the A.C.L.I., 11 March 1945, in Discorsi e radionessaggi di S. S. Pio XII, VII, Milan 1946, p. 9).