Even as some religious colleges decide against fighting a National Labor Relations Board ruling that throws open the door to their adjunct faculty unionizing, others are digging in their heels.
After the Seattle office of the NLRB ruled Tuesday that adjuncts at Seattle University, a Jesuit school, could count their impounded ballots for a union vote, the school made clear it would fight to preserve its autonomy, Inside Higher Ed reported:
Via email, Dean Forbes, a university spokesman, said Seattle wasn’t surprised by the decision and intends to file a request for review with the national board — which could be the first step in a court fight over NLRB jurisdiction over the university. “The petition is a necessary procedural step that preserves the university’s options to seek court review of the newly established criteria by a divided NLRB for determining whether it has jurisdiction over religiously affiliated colleges and universities,” Forbes said. “The issue is not whether employees may unionize. Rather, the issue is whether the government should have influence or control over the religious mission of Seattle University.”
Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, a “Spiritan” Catholic school, has been fighting the NLRB for three years on the same grounds, that the “secular government agency” can’t tell a religious institution how to accomplish its religious mission.
The dispute boils down to whether adjunct faculty need to have explicitly religious duties to be exempt from the right to unionize, under the NLRB’s interpretation of a 1972 Supreme Court ruling on religious colleges.
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