Dear Commons Community,
There is a growing struggle at several Catholic colleges and universities where administrators are seeking exemptions to the right of adjunct faculty to unionize. Manhattan College in New York; Seattle University; Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh; Saint Xavier University, in Chicago; and Loyola University Chicago have all recently sought religious exemptions from labor law that would end faculty union organizing campaigns. Two Catholic university groups — the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities have supported these exemption petitions. However, among other rationales, union organizers are referring to the Catholic Church’s own teachings to support their positions. As reported in The Huffington Post:
“Since at least the late 1800s, Catholic social teaching has recognized collective bargaining as a tool for social justice. Adjuncts and their allies say the schools are flouting Catholic principles by trying to deny teachers a path to join unions, particularly as Pope Francis rails against income inequality. The schools claim they are merely protecting themselves from government intrusion.
Daniel Kovalik, a lawyer for the United Steelworkers union, which has been organizing adjuncts at Duquesne says: “If you look at their arguments on those issues, they’re in a box. Going back to Pope Leo XIII, the Catholic Church has encouraged employers to recognize unions. With Pope Francis, it’s even more embarrassing to take a position counter to that.”
In a statement to HuffPost, a Manhattan College spokesperson said its adjuncts play an “indispensable role” at the school, but it must be able to manage its relationship with them “free of [government] oversight.”
“We believe that it would be irresponsible not to question vigorously the right of the government to insert itself into decisions that directly affect the heart and soul of our institution, not because of opposition to employees or antipathy to the rights of working people,” the college said.
Critics of that stance quickly point to Rerum Novarum, the encyclical on capital and labor issued by Pope Leo XIII. In this 1891 open letter to the Catholic bishops, the pope offered a few prescriptions for alleviating the “misery and wretchedness” he saw among the working classes of the Gilded Age. Near the top of his list was the right to free association with groups that can close the gap between rich and poor. “The most important of all are workingmen’s unions,” the pope wrote.
Just six years ago, in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that his predecessor’s appeal for unionism was even more relevant in an age of globalization. Unions, the pope said, were becoming too weak to effectively advocate for the working class. Calls to promote collective bargaining, Benedict urged, “must therefore be honored today even more than in the past.”
The adjuncts are in the right here not just on religious teaching grounds but also on common decency grounds. All of us in higher education know that adjunct faculty are among the most exploited class of workers in our profession.
Tony
