The United Steelworkers union has accused Duquesne University of unfair labor practices for laying off nearly all of the part-time faculty members in its English department, which has been a hotbed of efforts to organize the university’s adjunct instructors into a steelworkers-affiliated collective-bargaining unit.
Duquesne, a Roman Catholic institution in Pittsburgh, last week told 10 of 11 first-year writing instructors in the department that they would not be awarded new teaching contracts for the coming semester. The layoff notifications came as the university remained locked in a bitter struggle against union organizers in a case pending before the National Labor Relations Board.
Several other religious colleges have similarly mounted NLRB challenges to the unionization of adjunct instructors based on the argument that their religious freedom under the First Amendment would be infringed by the federal labor board’s oversight. Duquesne has acquired an exceptionally high profile in that labor struggle, however, as a result of the highly publicized 2013 death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, a former part-time French instructor who was nearly destitute at the end of her teaching career.
In one of two labor complaints filed against Duquesne on Friday, the United Steelworkers accused the university of carrying out the layoffs in retaliation for the adjunct instructors’ involvement in union organizing. In the other complaint, the union said the layoffs were part of a university effort to erode the potential membership of the proposed collective-bargaining unit by shifting academic work to tenured professors and others who would not qualify for union representation.
In a statement issued on Friday, Bridget Fare, a Duquesne spokeswoman, said the layoffs had “absolutely nothing to do with the union” and had come about as a result of a routine effort by the university to adjust its part-time labor force in response to fluctuations in enrollment and the number of full-time faculty members available to teach. She said some of the affected adjuncts might be hired back if enrollments increased, or might be offered work in the future.
The Academic Workers Association, a United Steelworkers affiliate involved in organizing Pittsburgh-area adjuncts, acknowledged in a statement that the circumstances surrounding the layoffs were unclear. Robin Sowards, a spokesman for the group, said one reason it was pushing for unionization was that collective-bargaining contracts compel institutions to provide the rationale for such decisions.
