Disturbing Development at St John’s University

For decades, St John’s University in New York City stood as an almost unique example of a private sector university whose tenured faculty enjoyed collective bargaining rights. Today it appears that this shining example of labor relations on the model of Catholic Social Teaching is in danger, and the consequences could threaten the union rights of thousands of Catholic school teachers across New York state.

Back in the 1970s Catholic school teachers across the country began to organize in unions – as is their right under Catholic Social Doctrine. However, Cardinal John Cody of Chicago took a hard line against the lay faculty, refusing to recognize their union and claiming exemption from the National Labor Relations Act under the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. The irony of claiming religious freedom in order to violate the tenets of the faith was seemingly lost on the Supreme Court, which duly ruled that Catholic school teachers had no legal protections under the NLRA. Catholic school teacher unions became the exception rather than the rule, existing only where the local Bishop tolerated them out of fidelity to Church teaching.

In a handful of states, state legislatures stepped into the gap where the NLRA had stood. The most prominent is New York, which gave the state’s Public Employee Relations Board jurisdiction over the Catholic schools (and universities) no longer covered under the NLRA. Teachers can vote for or against unionization in PERB elections and teachers at large Catholic school systems like those of the Archdiocese of New York or the Diocese of Buffalo enjoy union rights and contract protections. But developments at St. John’s could endanger those rights.

When the AAUP filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against St. John’s with the PERB over a contract bargaining dispute, the university went further than denying the university was engaged in an Unfair Labor Practice, raising the issue of First Amendment protections. If the university is successful in litigating this point, the faculty at St John’s and at Catholic schools across New York state could lose their union rights altogether. 

For more on the dispute at St John’s, read this account by Brian Fraga in the National Catholic Reporter.