Church vs. Adjunct Union
November 12, 2010

Sign a petition supporting the right of adjuncts to organize at http://www.nyorganizing.org/manhattan/Petition.htm

A 1980 Supreme Court decision largely blocked the unionization of faculty members at private colleges and universities, based on the idea that they had so much power that they effectively were part of management. Adjuncts, however, can't be said to be part of management -- and several unions have scored victories not only organizing adjuncts but winning key contract advances for them at private colleges.

An organizing drive at Manhattan College has run into a different issue: the college, a Roman Catholic institution, is asserting that its religious heritage would be threatened by an adjunct union, which would give federal officials oversight over labor relations at the college, and that federal court rulings give it the right to bar collective bargaining. The union says that its effort to get better pay and benefits for adjuncts will have no impact at all on the college's religious mission -- and that if anyone is ignoring church teachings, it is the college administrators, in not seeing the social justice behind the union drive. The National Labor Relations Board is currently holding hearings on the dispute -- and the outcome (quite likely the subject of court challenges) could either expand or limit the potential for adjunct unions at private colleges.

While the dispute has been building for months now, the union is going public with petition drives. Sign the petition at http://www.nyorganizing.org/manhattan/Petition.htm

For more information, see article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/12/manhattan