PROMOTION. – An English word Italianized, frequently used to signify the advancement of workers both in a technical-professional sense (the ladder 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 (foreman, department head, factory manager); and also of access to professions.
Promotion responds to criteria of justice and charity, by which the elevation of the working classes must be fostered by other classes, and to criteria of general interest, because the continuous influx of new elements is an indispensable condition for the continuity of the ruling classes, which wear out more rapidly and are more difficult to replenish on their own. It is moreover highly useful for establishing or preserving mutual understanding among the classes.
A collective promotion is also considered, concerning the entire working class, to obtain more humane living and working conditions, and easier access to culture, material goods, and the spiritual uplift of workers, as well as their gradual integration into the life of enterprises as partners and co-responsible parties.
This aspiration of the working class—to enhance the ability of each worker according to the possibilities and nature of the enterprise, and to gradually integrate workers into the life of the enterprise—is an almost universal phenomenon among laborers. The time has come, says Pius XII, to abandon empty phrases and to think of a new organization of productive forces... that opens to the working classes the path to honestly acquire their share of responsibility in the conduct of the national economy (Address to the A.C.I., March 11, 1945, in Discorsi e radiomessaggi di S. S. Pio XII, VII, Milan 1946, p. 9).