Dive Brief:
- The decision over the Carroll College case was the first test of the 2014 Pacific Lutheran decision, which offered an opening for unionizing at private colleges and universities, including religious ones, among tenured faculty — but the latest decision went the other way.
- Inside Higher Ed reports the regional National Labor Relations Board rejected the bid for two reasons that aligned with decisions that preceded Pacific Lutheran, ruling that tenure-line faculty are indeed managers who cannot unionize, and that faculty positions are sufficiently predicated on their religious beliefs so, on religious grounds, the case was outside of NLRB jurisdiction.
- The Pacific Lutheran decision opened the way for organizing at religious colleges and universities where faculty are not required to create or maintain the religious environment at the school, and since then, adjunct faculty at Duquesne University, Manhattan College, Saint Xavier University, and Seattle University have been allowed to form unions, but at Carroll the narrow interpretation won out.
Dive Insight:
The Seattle-based regional NLRB officer who ruled in the case found that even though only one faculty member had ever been fired on religious grounds, faculty’s jobs did depend on their contributions to the religious environment at the school. When it came to managerial responsibility, the NLRB officer again narrowly interpreted the leeway provided by Pacific Lutheran.
Adjunct faculty have turned to unions increasingly in recent years, demanding better benefits, more predictable schedules, and higher pay. As these faculty are not paid for their service and are not expected to participate in campus governance, they run no risk of being considered managers. This string of organizing could shift the new balance higher education has sought, relying more on part-time and otherwise non-tenure-track faculty. If the administrative benefits of a non-tenured teaching force erode, colleges and universities may reverse the trend and go back to traditional tenure.