The National Labor Relations Board has stopped a union election for adjunct instructors at Loyola Marymount University to investigate charges of illegal interference in the election process by the university’s administration.
A regional office of the NLRB halted the planned start of the election pending its investigation of unfair-labor-practice charges filed against the private college in Los Angeles by the Service Employees International Union, which is trying to organize adjuncts there. Hearings on the charges are planned for this week.
Officials of the SEIU declined on Friday to specify what unfair-labor-practice charges had been filed, maintaining that the allegations were confidential.
Kathleen Flanagan, a Loyola spokeswoman, said the NLRB had forwarded to her institution documents that say, without any elaboration, that Loyola is being accused of threatening to withdraw benefits from employees and also of promising employees either benefits or favorable resolutions of employment grievances.
“We don’t know of any activity that supports the allegations,” Ms. Flanagan said.
The SEIU is seeking to unionize adjunct instructors at Loyola Marymount, which is Roman Catholic, and other colleges in the Los Angeles area as part of a broader effort to organize adjunct faculty members throughout metropolitan areas. It has filed similar charges of unfair labor practices against another college in the area, the University of La Verne, which has denied the accusations. Adjunct instructors at nearby Whittier College voted to form a union in December.
The SEIU’s “metro” organizing strategy, which has spurred similar organizing efforts in Boston, Washington, D.C., and other cities, has as one of its chief objectives to unionize enough adjunct instructors in certain areas to put all local colleges under labor-market pressures to improve adjuncts’ working conditions.
Although Georgetown University, in Washington, did not oppose a successful SEIU drive to organize adjunct instructors there, other Catholic colleges have resisted such union efforts, prompting a debate over whether Catholic teachings favor allowing unions to improve the lives of workers or resisting unions to keep the religious institutions free from the federal labor board’s involvement in their affairs.
Sydni Dunn contributed to this article.
