Adjunct instructors at Manhattan College finished voting Wednesday on the question of whether to form a union at their institution. But the ballots might not be counted for weeks, if ever, because of the Roman Catholic college’s continued efforts to challenge the election as the product of an unconstitutional intrusion of the federal government into its affairs.
Manhattan College has appealed a January decision by the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in New York to allow the college’s nearly 200 adjunct instructors to vote on whether to form a union affiliated with the New York State United Teachers. The board plans to impound the ballots until its appeals office reaches a decision. The election could be rendered moot if the board ends up ruling in favor of the college, which was established in 1853 by the De La Salle Christian Brothers.
The dispute, closely watched by labor unions and religious organizations, hinges on the question of whether the college remains religious enough that any NLRB involvement in its affairs would violate the First Amendment’s clauses barring the government from establishing religion or prohibiting its free exercise.
In the decision he rendered in January, Elbert F. Tellem, an acting NLRB regional director, held that the college is too secular to be outside the board’s purview, citing various instances in which it “is decidedly not holding itself out as a religious organization” to students, job applicants, and the public.
The college argues in its appeal that it is, in fact, pervasively religious and that the board’s decision to weigh its religiousness represents, in itself, unconstitutional government intrusion into its affairs.
“I think we have a very strong position in this,” Brennan O’Donnell, president of Manhattan College, said this month in an interview. “I was surprised at the tack that the regional director took.”
Leaders of the unionization effort expressed frustration this week at the college’s continued effort to fight it. “It is simply a delaying tactic,” said Randolph M. Schutz, an adjunct professor of psychology and a founding member of the union drive’s organizing committee. “There is nothing in any part of this process that I can imagine is a threat to the Catholic integrity and Catholic teaching program of the college.”
Prolonged Fight
The college, in Riverdale, N.Y., has been fighting unionization for more than a decade. The NLRB had given all teaching faculty members at Manhattan College the right to collectively bargain back in 2000, but its faculty members then voted to not form a union after all. Changes in the college and in the law since that time have forced the NLRB to take new factors into account in considering the unionization petition that adjunct faculty members filed in October.
Much of the current dispute involves conflicting views of how the board and courts should apply a landmark 1979 Supreme Court decision involving an effort to unionize parochial school teachers, National Labor Relations Board v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, and various rulings handed down by lower federal courts in more-recent years.
In its Catholic Bishop ruling, the Supreme Court held that the NLRB would run afoul of the First Amendment in exercising jurisdiction over parochial schools that are focused on the propagation of religious faith. In a 2002 decision involving the University of Great Falls, a Roman Catholic institution in Montana, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the NLRB should not be in the business of determining whether a college is sufficiently religious to fall outside of its jurisdiction.
That court also set out a “bright line” test to determine if a college qualifies for an exemption from NLRB authority, based on the answer to three questions: Does the college hold itself out to the public as a religious institution? Is it nonprofit? And is it religiously affiliated? The test was applied by that circuit court again in 2009 in denying collective-bargaining rights to a faculty union at Carroll University, a Presbyterian institution in Wisconsin.
In allowing the latest Manhattan College election to go forward, Mr. Tellem, the regional NLRB director, argued that the board has not officially adopted the test put forward by the court in the Great Falls case, and that Manhattan College would fail that test anyway. He based his conclusion mainly on his assessment that that college has sought to strike a balance between maintaining a Catholic feel and emphasizing independence, academic freedom, diversity, and a secular mission.
His decision noted that the religious order that established the college does not wield any control over it, that its faculty members are hired based not on their religious beliefs but on their academic qualifications, and that the college does not proselytize to its student body, which is 65 percent Catholic.
Manhattan College—one of six Lasallian colleges in the United States—has argued that Mr. Tellem’s decision is based on a misunderstanding of Catholic colleges and how they now operate. In a statement issued a few days after the decision was rendered, Mr. O’Donnell, the college’s president, said, “Apparently the union and the government mistake our intellectual openness and welcoming spiritual environment, which we consider to be strengths of the Catholic intellectual tradition, as weaknesses.”
Seeking Justice
When interviewed this month, Mr. O’Donnell said his college’s resistance to unionization stems not from any worries about the possible budgetary repercussions, but from opposition to government entanglement in its affairs.
“You don’t need the union and the threat of entanglement it brings in order to do justice to your employees,” Mr. O’Donnell said. He argued that unions are just one potential means to ensuring justice for employees. “We are perfectly capable of doing justly by our employees without a union and all of the potential negatives that a union brings with it,” he said.
But Julie Berman, an organizer for New York State United Teachers, noted that the college already has unions representing its security guards and maintenance personnel and argued that a union for adjuncts would have no effect on the college’s Catholic nature. “Nobody is trying to dictate how many crucifixes they hang up, or their extracurricular activities, or things like that,” said Ms. Berman, whose statewide union is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.
Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice, based in Weymouth, Mass., has issued a statement supporting the unionization of adjunct faculty at Manhattan College based on the group’s belief that unionization is fully in keeping with the church’s teachings on social justice. The group’s chairman, Joseph J. Fahey, a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, said, “It is ludicrous to argue that having a union at a Catholic college contradicts the mission of the college. It fulfills the mission of the college.”
Deborah L. Harris, an adjunct instructor of education at Manhattan College who has helped organize the unionization effort, said that, as a lifelong Catholic, she would not be involved with such an effort if she believed it would interfere with the institution’s Catholic mission. Her motives, she said, are financial, stemming from her belief she is underpaid for the work she does. “We really don’t have the same privileges and salary levels as the full-timers have,” she said.
