Catholic School Union Busting
By 
Catholics like to talk a good game about social justice but working for Catholic colleges is pretty terrible from an employment perspective. Just about everyone I’ve known who teaches at Catholic colleges talks about low wages and the overall atmosphere that you should be happy to be working for Christ or whatnot. Decades ago, the faculty at St. John’s unionized. The administration among these good Catholics are as anti-union as any tech employer and now are just engaging in outright unionbusting.
Sixty-two years ago, St. John’s University (SJU) in New York City became the site of the first major faculty strike in U.S. history — a year-long conflict that followed the firing of 33 teachers, including three priests, without due process. Now, the struggle over labor conditions has forced the faculty to once again mobilize, a move precipitated by the current college administration’s abrupt announcement that it will no longer recognize two faculty unions or continue negotiations to hash out a new contract.
St. John’s president, Rev. Brian J. Shanley, and Provost and Senior Vice President Simon Geir Møller, told the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) that the move was necessary to give the college “the flexibility required to innovate … and deliver on our promise to our students.”
But faculty members, who had been demanding improved wages and greater transparency in how their share of health insurance premiums are calculated, call it union busting.
Is it from the papacy that Catholic schools are required to use the language of the C-suite?
And while the university’s administrators did not respond to Truthout’s multiple requests for an interview, they told NCR that the decision rests on a 2020 decision promulgated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That decision, Bethany College, 369 NLRB No. 98, removed NLRB jurisdiction over most of the 849 religiously affiliated colleges and universities in the country and prompted at least eight predominantly Catholic schools — Bethany and Boston Colleges, and Duquesne, Edward Waters, Loyola Marymount, Marquette, St. Leo and Wilberforce universities — to end union recognition on campus.
Critics see this as part of a general rightward trend in higher education.
Never let it be said that the American Catholic Church isn’t ecstatic to have stacked the Court with far-right Catholic hacks who hate workers as much as they do.