Union Rights at Religious College

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Inside Higher Ed

By Colleen Flaherty

Scores of adjunct instructors walked out of class last week at Seattle University during National Adjunct Walkout Day, asking for -- among other things -- the right to count the ballots in their recent election whether to unionize. And they got that right Tuesday, following a ruling from their regional National Labor Relations Board director, who rejected the university’s claim that the union would not be valid based on Seattle University’s Jesuit Roman Catholic identity and some of the adjuncts’ alleged managerial statuses.

The ruling is the first in a handful of similar cases involving adjunct union bids at religiously affiliated colleges or universities -- all of which were remanded to their local boards by the N.L.R.B. this winter. The remands followed a precedent-setting ruling in December by the N.L.R.B. that adjuncts at Pacific Lutheran University could form a union affiliated with Service Employees International Union, based on the board’s opinion that the adjuncts in question did not have specific managerial or religious duties that could prevent them from collective bargaining. The decision challenged legal precedent against faculty unions at religious institutions dating back to the 1979 U.S. Supreme Court case N.L.R.B. v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, as well as a precedent against tenure-line faculty unions at private institutions stemming from N.L.R.B. v. Yeshiva University in 1980.

In the Pacific Lutheran case, the N.L.R.B. rejected the university’s claim that full-time, non-tenure-track faculty members are managerial employees and therefore not entitled to collective bargaining. The ruling also suggested a series of tools for determining whether faculty members are managerial employees, such as whether they control academic programs, enrollment management policies or finances.

The N.L.R.B. in the Pacific Lutheran case also established guidance for determining whether faculty members at religious institutions may fall under N.L.R.B. jurisdiction. The N.L.R.B. said that a religious college would need to show that "it holds out the petitioned-for faculty members as performing a religious function. This requires a showing by the college or university that it holds out those faculty as performing a specific role in creating or maintaining the university’s religious educational environment."

FULL story at link.



Adjuncts at Seattle U. protest last week during National Adjunct Walkout Day.
SEIU



Read more: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/04/proposed-adjunct-union-seattle-u-passes-nlrb-eligibility-review

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This is HUGE!!!

http://action.seiu.org/page/content/JoinUs/

[happyslug]

1. Here are the two US Supreme Court cases cited in the article

NLRB v. CATHOLIC BISHOP OF CHICAGO, 440 U.S. 490 (1979) 440 U.S. 490

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=440&invol=490

The absence of an "affirmative intention of the Congress clearly expressed" fortifies our conclusion that Congress did not contemplate that the Board would require church-operated schools to grant recognition to unions as bargaining agents for their teachers.

The Board relies heavily upon Associated Press v. NLRB, [440 U.S. 490, 507] 301 U.S. 103 (1937). There the Court held that the First Amendment was no bar to the application of the Act to the Associated Press, an organization engaged in collecting information and news throughout the world and distributing it to its members. Perceiving nothing to suggest that application of the Act would infringe First Amendment guarantees of press freedoms, the Court sustained Board jurisdiction. Id., at 131-132. Here, on the contrary, the record affords abundant evidence that the Board's exercise of jurisdiction over teachers in church-operated schools would implicate the guarantees of the Religion Clauses.

NLRB v. CATHOLIC BISHOP OF CHICAGO, 440 U.S. 490 (1979) 440 U.S. 490

In simple terms, a RELIGIOUS School can exclude its teachers from forming a Union if it wants to. but Seattle is NOT a religious Schools, so that ruling does not apply. In fact the language strongly indicates that except for the fact it was a RELIGIOUS School, the teachers COULD unionized.

The second case mentioned was NLRB v. Yeshiva Univ., 444 U.S. 672 (1980)

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/444/672/

That case is another religious school case, but involve PROFESSORS not lay teachers. Professors were considered "professionals" under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 even as teachers were NOT. The rationale was that College Professors had duties the involve managing the school and evaluating each other and thus "Management". Notice in NLRB v Yeshiva University, the decision was NOT based on the issue of religion but was decided based on the concept of Professors being managment.

In this case we are dealing with Adjunct professors, i.e. student teachers NOT Professors. Thus NLRB v Yeshiva University does NOT apply for NLRB v Yeshiva University involved actual full time PROFESSORS not Adjunct professors who have NO role in evaluating other Adjunct professors or full time professors.

[happyslug]

2. THE NLRB docket in this case:

http://www.nlrb.gov/case/19-RC-102521

Go to the above cite to get a PDF format copy of the NLRB Decision in this case: