Religion Versus Unions

[rug]

Some professors at the Jesuit Seattle University have been barred from organizing because their jobs are too religious in nature.

By Michelle Chen
YESTERDAY 10:00 AM

Could your right to join a union with your coworkers clash with your communion with God? A recent crisis of faith at the National Labor Relations Board presents some tough lessons for the academic labor movement.

Although the non–tenure track faculty members at Seattle University scored the board’s blessing for their hard-fought union vote, with a 73-to-63 majority approving unionization with SEIU, 15 faculty members were excluded from the bargaining unit by divine intervention. The majority of the board ruled that their jobs were, in essence, too religious to unionize.

The ruling cited a crucial precedent that allowed faculty unionization at Catholic schools generally, but barred faculty holding “a specific role in creating and maintaining the school’s religious educational environment” from joining a collective-bargaining unit representing non-religious faculty. The logic is that a traditional collective-bargaining relationship would be incompatible with the supposed theological mission of religion-focused educators. But the problem with institutions like Seattle University, which also runs secular programs, is how to draw the line between religious and non-religious work—and why should union rights depend on whether an educator teaches theology or biology?

The excluded faculty members taught in the School of Theology and Ministry and Department of Theology and Religious Studies within the College of Arts & Sciences. According to the final ruling, the programs included courses like “Between the Bible and the Quran,” and the School of Theology granted degrees in divinity and ministry.

https://www.thenation.com/article/religion-versus-unions/

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

[uriel1972]

1. Out of curiosity...

Do you think that this is a positive, negative or neutral thing?

[rug]

2. Positive for whom?

As to this decision, it's a bad one and the outcome is not dictated by the Pacific Lutheran case.

[uriel1972]

3. I was interested in your point of view...

As to the legalities, I am unfamiliar with the US legal system in regards to unions, so I can only say the decision strikes me as ridiculous, from an outsiders perspective. The state deciding that you can't join a union because of religion, does seem to me quite bizarre, in what is often considered an advanced plural society.

[rug]

4. Are you from the UK?

Some people call state and federal agencies the fourth branch of government and administrative law the fthird source of law.

The NLRB decision is unlike most cases because it's the decision of an administrative law court. That decision is subject to review by a regular court of law, where historically much deference and accommodation are given to religious belief and practice.

In this case, the NLRB felt that providing professors of theology in a religious school the protection of the National Labor Relations Act could potentially lead to a conflict between a worker's rights and the religious rights of the school (the employer). So they exempted that group of workers only from the provisions of the NLRA. As I said, I think the decision was wrong and the exemption was not required by the statute or the NLRB's earlier decisions.

I don't know what system they use in your country.