Official Catholic social teaching (CST) has long endorsed unions as an “indispensable element of social life.”Footnote 1 According to the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), the right to unionize without fear of reprisal ranks among the “basic rights of the human person.”Footnote 2 However, in recent years several Catholic authors have expressed disapproval of unions, arguing that Catholics are not always obligated to support unions.Footnote 3 According to a Pew study, only 48 percent of US Catholics have a favorable view of unions.Footnote 4 Catholic philosopher Joe Holland has argued that the disdain for unions among Catholics in the United States and elsewhere has become an “unjust bourgeoisie class prejudice against workers and their human rights” that “undermines Catholic solidarity and evangelization of the working classes.”Footnote 5 Furthermore, Catholic hospitals, diocesan schools, and institutions of higher learning in the United States have engaged in “union busting,” which involves a systematic effort to thwart workers from unionizing.Footnote 6 Union-busting tactics can include, for example, hiring “union avoidance” firms, subjecting workers to antiunion propaganda at “captive audience” meetings, impeding efforts to unionize through litigation, and retaliation toward workers attempting to organize.Footnote 7
This breach of Catholic social teaching has occurred in the broader context of what can be called a war against workers and their right to unionize in the United States.Footnote 8 Given the persistence of low wages and unsafe working conditions for many laborers, more than half of the American workforce would join a union if possible.Footnote 9 Research demonstrates that “unions tend to improve the life satisfaction of individuals vis-à-vis nonunion members.”Footnote 10 However, union-busting and pro-business court decisions have made it increasingly harder for workers to organize, particularly since 1980.Footnote 11 So-called right-to-work laws have attempted to eviscerate unions by forcing them to represent workers who refuse to pay the significant costs associated with membership and representation.Footnote 12 Already by the 1990s, more than 20,000 workers annually experienced discrimination for union activity.Footnote 13 Human Rights Watch has thus reported that workers' freedom of association is “under sustained attack in the United States.”Footnote 14 As a result of this aggressive campaign against unions, union membership has dwindled to less than 7 percent of the private workforce in the United States.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Catholic institutions have engaged in union busting. As Catholic ethicist Daniel Finn contends, “History shows, of course, that the owners of capital have almost universally attempted to prevent the formation of labor unions at their origin and then they have tried to weaken their power after they were legalized.”Footnote 15 Catholic institutions, such as hospitals and universities, are corporations. While they serve good ends, they are also driven by “influence, interests, and money.”Footnote 16 However, given Catholic social teaching's clear mandate to support the rights of workers, including the right to unionize, and the call of the gospel to be a countercultural “sign of contradiction” (Luke 2:34; see also Acts 28:22), Catholic institutions should excel at protecting workers' rights in a world largely hostile to them.Footnote 17
Within this larger context, this article examines the main arguments of opponents to the unionization of adjuncts (part-time faculty) at Catholic universities.Footnote 18 As I shall discuss, these opponents often contend that the religious liberty of Catholic institutions is violated when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asserts its jurisdiction over these institutions to force them to recognize union elections. In addition to examining this issue, I will critique the argument of legal scholar Kathleen Brady that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) imposes a style of collective bargaining antithetical to the harmonious vision of labor relations in Catholic social teaching, thereby violating the religious liberty of Catholic institutions. I will devote significant attention to Brady's argument because she has most systematically and thoroughly elaborated a position either explicitly repeated by others or echoed in their arguments against unionization at Catholic institutions.Footnote 19 For example, administrators at Catholic health-care and educational institutions sometimes adopt the paternalistic rhetoric of the “benevolent employer.” They claim unions are unnecessary because they would disrupt the congenial relationships between managers and workers in Catholic workplaces, where workers are taken care of like family members.Footnote 20 Brady's position articulates this idealistic vision, but goes beyond it in significant ways. It may thus represent the most potent foundation for the claim that NLRB jurisdiction violates the religious freedom of Catholic universities, and simultaneously provide the strongest argument against the unionization of adjuncts.
I will contend that these arguments against adjunct faculty unionization at Catholic institutions are based on misunderstandings of Catholic social teaching and a misreading of facts on the ground. I will therefore argue that Catholic universities have no legitimate reason for thwarting the unionization efforts of adjuncts, particularly given the systematically unjust conditions in which they work and the broader assault against workers' rights in the United States. I make this argument while recognizing recent efforts to compensate adjuncts better on some Catholic campuses.Footnote 21 Adjuncts nonetheless retain the right to evaluate these efforts and to decide for or against a union themselves according to Catholic social teaching.
I will also contend that forestalling the unionization of adjuncts who desire a union undercuts the mission and identity of Catholic institutions, in particular the task of evangelization and the faith formation of students. I aim to demonstrate that union busting, of any type, poses a greater threat to the mission of Catholic universities than the putative problem of NLRB oversight and subsequent union elections, an issue that has been raised by the American Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and other Catholic higher-education leadership.Footnote 22 As I will discuss, this issue is a red herring because universities can avoid NLRB involvement altogether by simply recognizing adjunct unions designated through a “card check.” Finally, while this article focuses on recent efforts of adjuncts to unionize, its theses apply to the rights of all workers to unionize at Catholic institutions.
I. The Context: The Adjunct Situation on the Ground
Daniel Finn has offered a crucial insight that is related to the purpose of this article. He has rightly maintained that “there should be no independent analysis of the relation of capital and labor that does not take into consideration the moral context of the economic situation. Putting that another way, differing contexts will require different responses if we are to achieve a just relationship between the owners of capital and laborers.”Footnote 23 Thus, before turning to the debate about the rightfulness of adjunct unionization at Catholic universities, I will first provide a brief synopsis of the situation of adjuncts.Footnote 24 This synopsis will elucidate some of the reasons adjuncts at Catholic universities have sought to unionize. Following Finn's logic, this empirical contextualization of the debate about unionization at Catholic universities informs my conclusion that the arguments against it are invalid. Furthermore, I contend that those who argue against the unionization of adjuncts at Catholic universities either ignore or misunderstand the empirical context of the present debate.
Recently, more than 135 Catholic scholars, including eight past presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America, signed a statement maintaining that many adjunct professors today are among the poor and vulnerable in our midst.Footnote 25 I have heard numerous personal stories about financial hardship, forgoing necessary medical treatments, and marginalization from adjunct colleagues, all of which add credibility to the statement's claim, even if not all adjuncts suffer from an exploitative situation. Moreover, empirical data reveal that in many cases adjunct faculty are indeed among the poor and vulnerable. The treatment of adjunct faculty at Catholic universities thus often violates the preferential option for the poor, which holds that economic decisions must place the rights of the poor first.Footnote 26
While some adjuncts report that additional salaried jobs outside teaching constitute their primary source of income, the majority (almost 75 percent) do not.Footnote 27 Most adjunct faculty work for years and even decades in this capacity; they see teaching as their primary vocation.Footnote 28 According to the latest available data, the national median adjunct pay for a three-credit course is $2,700.Footnote 29 The median pay per course is lower for nonunionized part-time faculty ($2,475), while it is $3,100 among unionized adjuncts. Variations also exist depending on discipline, geography, and race. For example, engineering instructors' median pay per course is $4,000, while developmental education courses net a median pay of $2,074. The Coalition on the Academic Workforce reports that the pay differential between males and females per course is negligible, but a larger gap exists based on race: “Part-time faculty respondents who identified themselves as black (not of Hispanic origin) earn significantly less than other racial and ethnic groups at a median per-course pay of $2,083. . . . By comparison, median pay ranged from $2,500 per course for Hispanic or Latino or multiracial respondents to $2,925 for Asian or Pacific Islander respondents.”Footnote 30
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has estimated that part-time faculty's yearly earnings across the nation range from $18,000 to a little over $30,000 at private doctoral universities. “That rate of pay represents one-third or less of the national average salary for full-time faculty members at those institutions, based on the AAUP's 2010–11 data—and part-time positions do not include benefits, in most cases.”Footnote 31 A growing number of adjunct faculty earn so little that they qualify for public assistance.Footnote 32 Many respondents to the 2014 House Committee on Education and the Workforce study The Just-in-Time Professor reported earnings from $15,000 to $20,000. Given that the federal poverty line is $19,530 for a family of three and $23,550 for a family of four, many contingent faculty members live in or on the “edge of poverty” unless they rely on spousal, familial, or governmental assistance.Footnote 33 From the standpoint of Catholic social teaching, their wages do not reflect a preferential option for the poor and do not constitute a just wage, which must at least be a living wage. According to CST, a living wage must enable workers to adequately attend to their own and their dependents' “material, social, cultural, and spiritual life” (GS §67).Footnote 34 To add to the problem, most adjuncts do not receive health-care and retirement benefits from their employer, often making it difficult or impossible to purchase health insurance.Footnote 35 Catholic social teaching deems this a violation of the right to health care.Footnote 36
Employment as a university professor once provided a path to financial stability in the United States. Today it is often a treacherous path toward poverty. In the US context, the rise of the “lumpen professoriate,” a “superexploited core of disposable workers” that carries out most undergraduate teaching, has not occurred because of a drop in demand for higher education.Footnote 37 No such drop took place, with the exception of a few years after the 2008 financial crisis.Footnote 38 Rather, the impoverishment of university faculty stems from the massive rise in part-time positions and the concurrent decline in full-time posts. The reason for this development is simple: it is much cheaper to hire contingent faculty to teach students than it is to hire full-time faculty. As Marc Bousquet has pointed out, the putative “surplus” of doctoral degree holders could be completely eliminated by returning to the 1972 proportion of tenure-track to non-tenure-track faculty in just one large state, such as New York or California.Footnote 39 Thirty-five years ago three-quarters of all college faculty were on the tenure track.Footnote 40 At present, more than three-quarters (approximately 76 percent) of all college instructors are contingent faculty (part-time adjunct faculty members, full-time non-tenure-track faculty members, or graduate-student teaching assistants).Footnote 41 Former AAUP president Cary Nelson and his coauthor, Stephen Watt, deem adjunctification “the single most serious problem in higher education.”Footnote 42 Furthermore, the casualization of the academic workforce did not arise by happenstance. Rather, it is the linchpin of the strategic corporatization of the university.Footnote 43 Corporatized universities are “characterized by the entry of the university into marketplace relationships and by the use of market strategies in university decision-making.”Footnote 44 The corporatization of the university also reflects the larger neoliberal agenda to destroy solidarity among workers.Footnote 45 The “neoliberal assault on universities” subjects faculty and staff to a constant barrage of “crises,” austerity measures, and so-called reforms in order to “soften the resistance of faculty to change.”Footnote 46 Eliminating tenure-track posts and hiring more adjuncts provides a cost-cutting mechanism and solidifies managerial control over university matters once in the domain of tenured faculty.Footnote 47
Although the pay differential between male and female adjuncts may be marginal, women disproportionately bear the brunt of the casualization of the academic workforce. Women earn about 40 percent of all doctorates, yet they constitute about 58 percent of full-time contingent instructors.Footnote 48 The AAUP reports that in 2009 “44 percent of women in full-time faculty positions were off the tenure track, compared with 33 percent of men.”Footnote 49 Women hold 52.5 percent of all adjunct positions, while men hold 47.5 percent.Footnote 50 Bousquet argues that women recognize the “casualization” of the academic workforce as a feminist issue because “the sectors in which women outnumber men in the academy are uniformly the worst paid, frequently involving lessened autonomy—as in writing instruction, where the largely female staff is generally not rewarded for research, usually excluded from governance and even union representation, and frequently barred even from such basic expressions of academic discretion as choosing course texts, syllabus, requirements, and pedagogy.”Footnote 51 According to New Faculty Majority executive director Maria Maisto, the notion of self-sacrificial service and “the fallacy of teaching for love” are often used to justify exploitation of contingent faculty, particularly in disciplines most heavily represented by women.Footnote 52
Presumably some administrators shun adjunct unions because they fear a significant rise in adjunct compensation will necessitate hefty tuition increases. However, adjunct faculty have watched athletic budgets skyrocket at many universities while earning paltry wages. A report by the Delta Cost Project states that in the last few decades funding for athletics has increased at double the rate for academics. Large coaching salaries, state-of-the-art facilities, and scholarship aid for student-athletes constitute the bulk of these costs. According to the report, “Institutions are spending three to six times as much on student-athletes than they do to provide instruction for the average student on campus.”Footnote 53 In addition, the rate of growth in full-time, nonacademic positions in higher education was an astounding 369 percent between 1975 and 2011. Full-time executive administrator positions increased by 141 percent. By comparison, tenure-track faculty appointments grew by only 23 percent during this period. Conversely, less costly part-time adjunct and full-time, non-tenure-track faculty jobs increased by 554 percent (286 percent and 259 percent, respectively).Footnote 54 In other words, a massive shift in financial expenditures at universities occurred, moving salary dollars away from faculty and toward nonfaculty employees. Moreover, athletics personnel and high-ranking administrators often make very generous salaries. These groups experienced exponentially higher salary growth than full-time, tenured professors, to say nothing of adjuncts.Footnote 55 The salaries of coaches are sometimes even a hundred times higher than those of a typical adjunct, while administrators often earn twenty or thirty times more than an adjunct.Footnote 56 In this vein, it is worth recalling that Pope John XXIII deemed “disproportionately high” wages unjust, particularly when many workers are not paid a living wage.Footnote 57 In addition, funding for building projects, many of which are not essential to learning, constitutes a potential source of revenue for adjunct pay.Footnote 58 In other words, there are other ways of keeping tuition down while compensating adjuncts more fairly.Footnote 59 Furthermore, raising adjunct pay to $5,000 per course, a goal of numerous adjunct organizations, would pale by comparison to expenditures on athletics and infrastructure at most schools.Footnote 60
Abysmal, unjust pay is not the only form of injustice that adjuncts face; they encounter various kinds of marginalization. Adjunct faculty often do not even have shared office space, a telephone, photocopying privileges, or access to teaching materials at the university—all of which are needed to fulfill the job.Footnote 61 They wander transiently from university to university to make ends meet, often spending hours commuting. Like temp workers, they are often hired “just in time,” leaving little or no time to prepare syllabi and gather course materials.Footnote 62 In addition, adjunct faculty have little to no say in curriculum development or university governance at most institutions. They are often not permitted to attend departmental meetings where important decisions are made that affect them.Footnote 63 Their pictures, bios, and credentials seldom adorn university web pages. In other words, they often have no voice, and their presence in the community is limited. Adjuncts sometimes report feeling that they are invisible, disposable, or subhuman in the eyes of others around the university.Footnote 64 Although some tenure-track faculty and administrators try to form relationships of solidarity with adjuncts, many in those privileged positions refuse to refer to them as faculty.Footnote 65 Furthermore, contingent faculty usually do not enjoy the protection of academic freedom, which traditionally has empowered tenure-track professors to present uncomfortable truths to their students, the university community, and broader society. They therefore report feeling more vulnerable to resentment and retaliation.Footnote 66 However, in the face of their unjust situation, a growing number of adjuncts have refused to remain passive and helpless. They have devised ways of engaging in various forms of “self-advocacy,” as Maria Maisto has put it.Footnote 67
II. Adjuncts and the Struggle to Unionize at Catholic Colleges and Universities
Although contingent faculty recognize that unions are not a panacea, many adjuncts, including those at Catholic institutions, have increasingly determined that joining a union represents the best means to empower themselves.Footnote 68 However, since 2010 several Catholic universities petitioned the NLRB in Washington, DC, to overturn the regional NLRB's decision that union elections must be allowed and recognized. These universities argue that according to the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, a government agency such as the NLRB cannot assert its jurisdiction over Catholic universities to enforce labor laws (such as the right to unionize). They contend that Catholic universities qua religious institutions are entitled to exemption from NLRB jurisdiction, and thus are not required to accept a union election overseen by the NLRB.Footnote 69 The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, and the Lasallian Association of Catholic Presidents filed an amicus brief in support of these universities affirming this line of argumentation.Footnote 70 Other Catholic university administrators have expressed their disapproval of incipient adjunct unionization efforts, perhaps implying that they too will join the legal battle against adjunct unionization.Footnote 71 While they claim their fight is for religious freedom, this appeals process prevents adjuncts from unionizing because the results of any union election must be impounded until the process is over. This has a union-busting effect.
From a legal standpoint, the religious litmus test that the NLRB has employed since NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago in 1979 may be problematic. It does appear intrusive for a governmental institution such as the NLRB to “troll through the university's practices” to determine if it has a substantially “religious mission.”Footnote 72 Practically speaking, a government agency may not have the competence to determine whether or not a Catholic university truly functions as a religious institution. To put it bluntly, how can we be assured that members of the NLRB have significant enough training in Catholic doctrine to make this determination? Might their rulings in this matter be based on ignorance, bias, or both? On December 16, 2014, the NLRB in Washington ruled on an appeal involving adjuncts at Pacific Lutheran University. In its decision, the NLRB created a new standard to determine if an institution's religious character precludes NLRB jurisdiction. Contingent faculty have hailed this as a victory, as the NLRB asserted its authority to authorize a union election at Pacific Lutheran.Footnote 73 The decision should further unionization efforts at Seattle University, Manhattan College, and elsewhere, as the NLRB stated this new standard will be applied to all pending cases, including those involving Catholic universities.Footnote 74 However, it is reasonable to surmise that this NLRB decision will face further legal challenges in the US Court of Appeals.
Hindering adjunct unionization drives through legal means is problematic on several counts. For starters, University of St. Thomas law professor Susan Stabile has cogently argued against the claim that government oversight is an unjust infringement on the religious liberty of Catholic institutions of higher learning. As she points out, almost all Catholic colleges and institutions already subject themselves willingly to governmental oversight via “regional agencies regarding terms and conditions of the employment of their faculty and of faculty/university relations. That they do so suggests that being subject to NLRB oversight would not impose a unique burden on their institutions. Accreditors already impose requirements on them as to faculty governance, academic freedom and other matters that relate to terms and conditions of employment.”Footnote 75
In my judgment, the practice of Catholic universities seeking a religious exemption from NLRB jurisdiction when employees wish to unionize is a dubious one, and may even appear cynical. It would be understandable if the NLRB wanted to prevent Catholic universities from giving preference to Catholics in hiring, as religious institutions have long enjoyed exemption from religious antidiscrimination laws in order to hire the necessary employees to fulfill their mission.Footnote 76 However, in many other cases Catholic teaching largely aligns with, and even surpasses, protections of the rights of the worker enshrined in American labor law.Footnote 77 In other words, when it requires a union election, the NLRB is not asking Catholic universities to do something that violates their tradition's teaching. When a Catholic university refuses to recognize the right to unionize of its adjunct faculty, it violates its own tradition's teaching, not a heteronomous legal injunction imposed upon it by a governmental authority. The right to unionize is something that official Catholic teaching itself has continually endorsed at least since Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.Footnote 78 Furthermore, as I will discuss in more detail below, church teaching has explicitly stated that “all church institutions must also fully recognize the rights of employees to organize and bargain collectively with those institutions through whatever association or organization they freely choose.”Footnote 79 Therefore, even if the NLRB has no business determining if a college or university is religious, being a religious institution should not prompt a Catholic university to circumvent labor laws protecting the basic right of workers to unionize. Moreover, being deemed a nonreligious institution according to any legal standard used by the NLRB does not prevent Catholic institutions from carrying on their religious mission in cases dealing with unionization. As I will argue below, Catholic universities themselves tarnish their identity and threaten their mission by engaging in union busting.
In a sense, Catholic universities have invited this putative “governmental intrusion” upon themselves. As I mentioned in the introduction, Catholic universities could avoid the problem of NLRB jurisdiction altogether by allowing a free and fair union election to take place without NLRB involvement, which Section 9 (a) of the NLRA permits.Footnote 80 In fact, use of the NLRB process by antiunion employers is often a stall tactic. According to Catholic labor law expert David Gregory, workers have been repeatedly harassed or even fired by the employer during the protracted process of an NLRB union election. As a result, unions and workers who wish to join them generally prefer “card check” authorizations, which the NRLB does not oversee. In this case, a mutually agreed-upon arbitrator or respected community leader verifies that a majority of workers have opted for a union by signing authorization cards. The employer subsequently recognizes the union and agrees to engage in collective bargaining with it.Footnote 81
The Catholic Church has a precedent and venerable role model for this kind of willingness to accept workers' desire to unionize. In 1993 Pope John Paul II directed Vatican officials to recognize the long-stated desire to form a union of the Association of Vatican Lay Employees. As canon lawyer Father Sinclair Oubre has observed, John Paul II's experience as a manual laborer in Poland greatly influenced his decision to formally recognize the union of Vatican employees.Footnote 82 The following excerpt from a homily he gave in Mogiła, Poland, reveals as much:
The Pope is not afraid of the people of the working class. They have always been particularly close to him. He has come from their midst: from the quarries in Zakrzówek, from the Solvay furnaces in Borek Fałęcki, and then from Nowa Huta. Through these environments, through his own experience of labor, I dare to say, this Pope learned the Gospel anew. He noticed and became convinced that the problems being raised today about human labor are deeply engraved in the Gospel, that they cannot be fully solved without the Gospel.Footnote 83
Naturally, this raises the question: if Saint John Paul determined it was appropriate to recognize the union of Vatican employees, on what basis do Catholic universities refuse to recognize a union freely elected by a group of its employees such as adjuncts?
Michael Moreland argues that “there is nothing inconsistent with affirming the objectives of unionization while insisting that religious freedom requires that religious institutions be free of government oversight of employment practices.”Footnote 84 This is formally true. However, canon law does not adopt this logic; it does not posit antinomy between civil law and the church's law in the area of labor. In fact, canon law creates a conundrum for universities objecting to NLRB oversight. Oubre points out that a nation's civil laws, such as labor laws, essentially become canon law as long as they “are not contrary to divine law and unless canon law provides otherwise.”Footnote 85 Moreover, canon law itself explicitly recognizes the right of church employees to the freedom of association, which includes the right to unionize.Footnote 86 Perhaps this explains why Cardinal John O'Connor of New York apparently stated, “Over my dead body will any person be fired because he or she belongs to a union and is exercising the right to collective bargaining. I will not stand for union busting.”Footnote 87 Even though Catholic universities are not canonically ecclesial institutions, their Catholic status should compel them to attempt to incorporate these canons into their policies and structures.Footnote 88
III. CST on Human Labor, Solidarity, and Conflict
Thus far I have demonstrated that arguments against adjunct unionization at Catholic universities lack force. However, legal scholar Kathleen A. Brady has proffered a more sophisticated argument against NLRB jurisdiction over Catholic universities, which, if correct, would undermine Catholic support for unions given the current American legal context. She does not object to the NRLB exercising its jurisdiction per se over “secular matters” in the area of employment at Catholic institutions. In her view, “a broad freedom to be left alone in all matters, religious and secular, is asking too much if autonomy over religious matters is not endangered.”Footnote 89 Rather, she has contended that the understanding of collective bargaining in the NLRA presumes and promotes a much more antagonistic and conflictual relationship between employers and unionized employees than Catholic social teaching envisions. Imposing this model on Catholic institutions of higher learning, for example, would impinge upon their ability to practice the spirit of “brotherhood and cooperation” envisioned in labor-management relations by CST.Footnote 90 Thus, legally requiring the recognition of unions would violate the religious freedom of Catholic colleges and universities to fulfill their mission. At first blush, this seems like a peculiar argument, given that lay and religious Catholics have a long history of working in and for labor unions.Footnote 91 Moreover, certain types of nonacademic unionized workers have fruitfully worked with administrators at Catholic universities for decades. Nonetheless, if Brady's construal of CST on labor and her interpretation of certain provisions of the NLRA and its brand of collective bargaining are correct, her argument gains force.
While Brady's argument may appear persuasive on a certain level, it fails for numerous reasons. Brady correctly maintains that CST posits the ability of workers and their employers to rise above their often conflicting interests in order to reach compromises that reasonably fulfill their competing claims. CST certainly eschews the notion of intractable class struggle.Footnote 92 However, Brady misconstrues CST in a way that makes it sound naïve and oblivious to the sinful personal drives and social structures that often cause discord and oppression. These “structures of sin,” as CST has referred to them, will not disappear without struggle.Footnote 93 History has demonstrated that oppressors seldom cede their power and the systems that maintain it willingly. Therefore, unlike Brady and those who echo her view, CST recognizes that conflict sometimes must play a role in building solidarity, particularly in aiding the marginalized and oppressed. Solidarity in CST allows for the use of nonviolent resistance such as strikes and civil protest in the face of injustices such as the continual violation of workers' rights.Footnote 94 Brady acknowledges the church's teaching on structures of sin, but she fails to draw the correct conclusions from it.Footnote 95 Her contention that CST has consistently advocated a “collaborative relationship” between workers and management is true.Footnote 96 However, she overlooks the unjust power dynamics that preclude harmonious relations between employers and employees, including in Catholic workplaces. She rightly maintains that Catholic employers are called to be models, but downplays the fact that many are not, thereby, in the viewpoint of their workers, necessitating unions.
In his encyclical on human work, Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II unambiguously endorsed strikes by unions when other methods fail, “as a kind of ultimatum to the competent bodies, especially the employers.”Footnote 97 While unions are not a “mouthpiece for class struggle,” they function as a “mouthpiece in the struggle for social justice.”Footnote 98 He also posited “the positive role of conflict” when it “takes the form of a struggle for social justice.”Footnote 99 Solidarity “presupposes taking sides with the most needy [sic] people . . . to defend their rights and attend to their just claims.”Footnote 100 Thus, as Gregory Baum contends, John Paul “fully endorsed” the “conflictual view of modern society,” most notably in his encyclical on human labor.Footnote 101
If the pontiff did not endorse this approach, how else could we understand his unswerving support for the Solidarność movement in Poland?Footnote 102 As the movement's chaplain, Father Józef Tischner, put it, solidarity seeks to “hold up a mirror for the oppressor” so that the person may recognize his or her violations of justice and rectify them. Dialogue, shaming, and strikes may be employed toward this end.Footnote 103 In 1987 John Paul II exhorted Poles on the Baltic coast in words reminiscent of Tischner: “Solidarity must come before conflict . . . yet it also triggers conflict . . . but not conflict that treats another person as an enemy and seeks his or her destruction.”Footnote 104 For Tischner and John Paul the goal of the struggle for justice cannot be the annihilation or forceful suppression of the oppressor. Rather, those who struggle for justice ultimately seek the other's conversion and the overturning of unjust social structures.Footnote 105 In short, only a distorted, ahistorical, and overly “passivistic” view of CST disallows the possibility of conflict between management and labor. Furthermore, the approach of CST has roots in the gospel, as “Jesus' third way is coercive, as it forces oppressors to make choices they would rather not make.”Footnote 106
The difference between Brady's position and CST is ultimately rooted in divergent theological anthropologies. Modern Catholic social teaching sees the human potential to shape a better future, but it also acknowledges the fallenness of humanity and the propensity to sin (as seen, for example, in GS §13). The hopeful yet realistic anthropology of CST undergirds Catholic positions on social ethics. For example, Catholicism accepts the need for regulation of the economy.Footnote 107 An overly optimistic anthropology posits no need to regulate the economy. If we believe, for example, that companies will not subject their workers to unsafe working conditions or that industries, out of an abundance of goodwill, will not cause environmental damage, there is no need for the coercive power of laws to keep companies in check. Indeed, laws that seek to protect workers from workplace injury or illness or to protect humans and the environment from the nefarious effects of pollution assume that some employers and some corporations will engage in these harmful practices. In other words, a negative assumption about the nature of the human person functions in such laws. Human experience confirms this assumption.Footnote 108 Humans will not always willingly do the right thing, especially when their own self-interest prompts them to engage in actions that may be harmful to others. Long ago, Saint Augustine soberly reminded us of this fact.Footnote 109 This does not mean, of course, that Catholic institutions should give up on the promise of the human spirit to choose goodness over evil, with the aid of God's grace. Indeed, Catholic institutions have an obligation to strive toward solidarity, peace, and justice, an obligation that requires overcoming the tendency to sin and the desire for power.Footnote 110 However, it would be naïve and irresponsible to assume that this will always happen in any realm of life, whether it is the workplace, the financial sector, the battlefield, or the home. Catholicism thus accepts the necessity of laws that “encourage” right behavior.Footnote 111 Catholicism also acknowledges that in various realms the prudential use of power will be necessary to promote justice, human rights, and the common good.Footnote 112
This same anthropology implicitly grounds CST's acceptance of the strike as a means of promoting peace and justice in labor relations.Footnote 113Gaudium et Spes (§68) maintains that “although recourse must always be had first to a sincere dialogue between the parties, a strike, nevertheless, can remain even in present-day circumstances a necessary, though ultimate, aid for the defense of the workers' own rights and the fulfillment of their just desires.” Thus it makes little sense to argue that Catholicism cannot accept and comply with a system of collective bargaining that falls short of its ideal vision for labor-management relations. CST itself realistically acknowledges that the ideal will not always be possible in particular circumstances.
Brady's argument also obfuscates the fact that official CST's continuous insistence on the right to unionize and to engage in collective bargaining is rooted in the recognition of an imbalance of power that gives owners an unfair advantage over workers.Footnote 114 In addition to unions being a “natural” form of association among workers, CST also sees unions as a necessary “reaction” to labor's precarious situation, which has perdured since the Industrial Revolution.Footnote 115 After affirming myriad rights of workers, including the right to just wages and to form unions, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church correctly maintains “these rights are often infringed, as is confirmed by the sad fact of workers who are underpaid and without protection or adequate representation. It often happens that work conditions for men, women and children, especially in developing countries, are so inhumane that they are an offense to their dignity and compromise their health.”Footnote 116 Citing John Paul II, the Compendium further states that “unions grew up from the struggle of workers . . . to protect their just rights vis-à-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production.” Furthermore, “the practice of authentic solidarity among workers” remains more important than ever because their rights continue to be violated by employers.Footnote 117 In his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated the urgency of workers forming associations “that can defend their rights.” According to the pontiff, “grave danger for the rights of workers” exists in underdeveloped, emerging, and advanced capitalist societies in part because of efforts to hamper unions.Footnote 118 Thus CST recognizes that the present context, which I described above as a war against workers, evinces some of the pernicious consequences of the imbalance of power between owners and workers, which often leaves workers at the mercy of their employers.Footnote 119
In this connection, it is also telling that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has unwaveringly endorsed the rights to unionize and collective bargaining with the full knowledge of the context within which those rights must be exercised—namely, under the aegis of the NLRA and its mandates regarding collective bargaining. The bishops either do not share Brady's fear that the NLRA will compel employers and employees to become adversaries, or they conclude that as a matter of prudential judgment Catholics should support unions, given the hostile and precarious environment that workers face, even if the NLRA does not fully reflect the Catholic vision of labor-management relations. The bishops understand that neither unions nor management always strive for the hospitable relationship proposed by CST as the ideal. They nevertheless maintained in their 2012 Labor Day statement: “When labor institutions fall short, it does not negate Catholic teaching in support of unions and the protection of working people, but calls out for a renewed focus and candid dialogue on how to best defend workers. Indeed, economic renewal that places working people and their families at the center of economic life cannot take place without effective unions.”Footnote 120 In 2009 the bishops released Respecting the Just Rights of Workers: Guidance and Options for Catholic Health Care and Unions, a document written to guide workplace relations at Catholic institutions in the contemporary American context, the same context Brady addresses. Space limitations preclude extended discussion of this landmark document here. It suffices to note that the bishops “recognize that conflict and controversy” sometimes arise between “management and unions.” Nonetheless, they insist that the workers' right to join a union must always be respected and that “unions may play a beneficial role in any workplace.”Footnote 121 Thus, the USCCB rejects Brady's all-or-nothing approach to the acceptance of unions.
Brady's argument against unionizing at Catholic institutions suffers from another flaw. Susan Stabile has argued that the experience of Catholic hospitals invalidates Brady's thesis. Since 1974 Catholic hospitals must abide by the putatively more hostile form of collective bargaining of the NLRA. However, this has not precluded Catholic hospitals from also pursuing a cooperative model of labor relations informed by Catholic teaching. In fact, the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) has long embraced the application of the NLRA to Catholic hospitals, including the right to unionize.Footnote 122 It is a logical fallacy to say that because Catholic institutions are compelled by law to abide by the NLRA, which allegedly proposes an antagonistic form of collaborative bargaining, they cannot possibly strive for labor-management relations that more closely approximate the “tranquil ideal” of CST. After all, paying taxes that support unjust killing in warfare, for example, does not preclude Catholics from simultaneously using their resources to promote just causes. Likewise, laws requiring Catholics to accept the right to private property of other citizens, including those who hoard possessions, does not prevent them from sacrificing their own goods to promote solidarity with the poor and the common good. As Finn contends, believing that “a legal obligation makes virtuous behavior impossible” constitutes “a thoroughly un-Catholic view of law and morality, directly contrary, for example, to longstanding Thomistic tradition.”Footnote 123
Additional recent experience confirms that the existence of a labor union in Catholic workplaces does not preclude collaborative and peaceful relations between employers and employees. After many years of mistrust and animosity between workers and management at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in California, relations improved after a union was finally recognized in 2009. According to Adam Reich's illuminating account, “The union was no longer a group of outsiders, but was part of the community of the hospital.”Footnote 124 Georgetown University has also maintained good relations with unions on its campus. The university did not oppose its adjuncts' unionization drive. Officially, the university defaulted to its already existing just employment policy, which upholds the right of all employees on campus to unionize.Footnote 125 According to Lisa Krim, an adviser to Georgetown's president, “Taking a neutral position has actually served Georgetown very well. In subsequent dealings with the newly formed union, we brought a whole lot of good faith to the table, which really helps a lot.”Footnote 126 A spokesperson for the union stated that the university's administration was “not just neutral but very cooperative throughout the entire process. . . . They really upheld their social values.”Footnote 127 The congenial relationship has benefited both sides. Unionized adjuncts at Georgetown have amicably negotiated a contract with the administration, belying the canard that the presence of a “third-party” union precludes collaboration between employer and employee.Footnote 128 As Holland notes, to say unions are somehow distinct from workers is analogous to claiming that an organization like “the Knights of Columbus is separate from its members.”Footnote 129
Brady correctly points out that CST has emphasized worker participation in decisions that affect them and the overall work process.Footnote 130 She also maintains, however, that NLRA Section 8 (a) (2) forces workers to remain at “arm's length” from management.Footnote 131 While legal scholars have criticized this section for impeding some forms of collaboration, it has not stood in the way of employee participation schemes, as Brady herself admits.Footnote 132 Collaborative labor-management partnerships have been implemented. Thomas Kochan, a professor of management at MIT, argues that “the best employers and worker organizations could do what Kaiser Permanente and its union coalition are doing—build partnerships that nurture employee engagement. Workers respond well to these partnerships.”Footnote 133 This labor-management partnership, “the largest and most ambitious labor management partnership in the history of US labor relations,” might serve as an example for others.Footnote 134 Moreover, it demonstrates that the NLRA does not preclude a collaborative form of collective bargaining, as does the case of the CHA, which is also bound by the NLRA. Furthermore, many other employers have gone above and beyond its requirements in their treatment of their employees. One often highlighted example is Costco, the major retail outlet: its founder and CEO, James Sinegal, is a Catholic who has said that his Catholic faith informs the way he treats Costco employees. Costco workers are free to unionize, are paid very competitive wages, and provided with health benefits.Footnote 135
Living the gospel does not require being free from the jurisdiction of civil law, unless it unequivocally requires violating natural law. Catholic teaching, as proposed for example by John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor, holds that injunctions such as the prohibition against murder, which obviously has been enshrined in civil law, are the “precondition” to living the more virtuous path of charity and solidarity.Footnote 136 As Saint Augustine explained, “The beginning of freedom . . . is to be free from crimes . . . such as murder, adultery, fornication, theft, fraud, sacrilege, and so forth. When once one is without these crimes (and every Christian should be without them), one begins to lift up one's head towards freedom. But this is only the beginning of freedom, not perfect freedom.”Footnote 137 Abiding by the NLRA requires meeting a certain minimum standard in labor-management relations. The NLRA merely mandates respect for the right to collective bargaining and the legal recognition of unions freely elected by a majority of employees. However, these examples demonstrate that the NLRA also leaves space within which a morally superior form of labor-management relations, one imbued with the spirit of caritas, can be cultivated. The law itself does not necessitate a negative disposition between labor and employers. According to James Gross, an expert on labor law at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School, the NLRA does not compel anything beyond “requiring employers and unions to bargain with each other in good faith.”Footnote 138 Given Gross' claim and the above-mentioned positive examples of union-management partnerships, one wonders if Brady's argument rests on an overly negative and stereotypical view of unions as inherently and intractably combative.Footnote 139 Union members and administrators alike can and do engage in destructive, sinful behavior. However, this does not discount the tremendous good unions have done—as noted by popes since Leo XIII—and their ability to continually improve. Moreover, as Saint John Paul reminded us, all human institutions, including the church itself, consist of sinners and therefore need constant renewal.Footnote 140
Arguing against the applicability of the NLRA to Catholic institutions presents another problem: many exempted Catholic institutions do not live up to the idealized vision of labor-management relations that Brady describes. As Stabile rightly contends, “The problem is that Catholic colleges and universities have not modeled the vision Brady offers. The employee groups seeking unionization have done so because Catholic colleges and universities have not offered a cooperative model of collective bargaining and appear to treat their employees no more lovingly than secular institutions of higher learning do.”Footnote 141 Moreover, it is doubtful that enough administrators even know and/or embrace CST's vision of labor-management relations. Many are not Catholic, and those who are often embrace different paradigms.Footnote 142 They import models from the corporate world that are antithetical to CST (exclusively market-based pay schemes, cutting costs on the backs of workers, viewing students as customers, etc.). Catholic colleges and universities have certainly not remained immune to the corporatization of the university.Footnote 143 Thus, it is unrealistic to think workers' rights will always be protected without struggle. Meanwhile workers' rights cannot be suspended in the air waiting for the “eschatological” vision of workplace harmony that Brady touts. As Saint John Paul said on numerous occasions, the rights of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed cannot be put on hold.Footnote 144
IV. The Mission of Catholic Universities and the Scandal of Union Busting
To reiterate, Brady contends that (1) collective bargaining according to the courts' interpretation of the NLRA would impose an adversarial style of labor-management relations that conflicts with the irenic vision of labor-management relations of CST; and (2) this vision might someday be realistically and fully implemented at Catholic institutions, even if it is not currently. I have tried to demonstrate the weaknesses of these arguments. However, even if Brady's claims were true, Catholic universities should not use legal recourse to forestall unionization efforts. This is the case even if the courts might plausibly uphold the religious exemption that Catholic universities seek from the jurisdiction of the NLRB. Catholic universities availing themselves of the courts will likely create a hostile environment, the environment that Brady precisely wants to avoid. The expensive legal battles that some Catholic universities are fighting right now surely will lead to a more rancorous situation between adjunct faculty and the administration, perhaps cutting off all hope of a more collaborative relationship in the future. In other words, to follow Brady's logic, if the NLRB decides in favor of adjuncts' right to unionize, the course of action more consistent with CST would be to accept their choice to be represented by a union, rather than paying expensive law firms to fight against this right through the legal system. In this connection, Saint Paul's rebuke of wealthy Corinthians using the courts to take advantage of poorer citizens is instructive: “I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers! The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters” (1 Cor 6:5–11 NIV).Footnote 145
In the present situation, Catholic university administrations are behaving analogously toward adjunct faculty members who wish to unionize by ensnaring their unionization drives in protracted legal battles.Footnote 146 Many adjuncts clearly represent the marginalized in our current-day “Corinthian” universities. Catholic universities and their leaders function as the elite, as evidenced by their use of powerful law firms to defeat their adversaries in court. They should instead follow the guidelines developed by the USCCB in Respecting the Just Rights of Workers. These guidelines commit both sides to a mutually acceptable “fair and expeditious process” that avoids protracted legal and jurisdictional battles that delay deciding to unionize or not. According to the bishops, management must respect whatever decision the workers make and whatever reason they have for making it.Footnote 147 Catholic institutions of higher learning paying enormous sums of money to high-powered law firms to assert their exemption from NLRB jurisdiction, while at the same time fighting the efforts of adjuncts to unionize, flouts CST. The question must be asked, what message do Catholic institutions send to their students and the larger society about the applicability of CST to real-world problems? Given the church's clear support for unions, including at Catholic workplaces, using legal recourse to thwart adjunct unions runs the risk of causing scandal.Footnote 148
According to M. Cathleen Kaveny, “Causing scandal in the theological sense connotes performing an action that increases the possibility that other persons who witness the action will engage in morally objectionable activity themselves.”Footnote 149 Moreover, scandal arises when the action taken cannot reasonably be explained to those in the Catholic community as being consistent with the values of the tradition.Footnote 150 Apart from antiunion bias among some Catholics, it hardly seems plausible that Catholics could fathom Catholic universities, already expensive, using large sums of money to fight the efforts of grossly underpaid adjuncts to unionize, especially given CST's steadfast affirmation of the right to unionize.
In her study of the Catholic concept of scandal, Angela Senander rightly contends that “the scandal of sin within the Church obscures the proclamation of the Good News.”Footnote 151 In my judgment, union busting on Catholic campuses has a deleterious effect on the faith formation of students and impedes the evangelizing mission of the university. According to Ex Corde Ecclesiae, by virtue of their identity and mission Catholic universities are obliged to teach CST and discuss its prescriptions for a more just and peaceful world.Footnote 152 The aim is not simply to transmit knowledge, but to help shape the minds and hearts of our students so that they can transform the world for the better.Footnote 153 In other words, we should seek to aid them in the formation of their faith and their consciences.Footnote 154 If teaching CST is to have this kind of transformative effect on our students, Catholic educators and institutions must move from talk to action. Modeling the ideals of the Catholic social tradition is even more important than teaching them in the classroom. As William Spohn put it, “We learn that a wise, compassionate, and committed life is possible from the living witnesses whom we know. The ideals that guide conscience do not reside in the starry heavens but in actual people we admire.”Footnote 155
Catholic institutions of higher learning must thus demonstrate their own willingness to implement the church's social teaching, including the rights of workers, in order for it to be credible. Over the years, a number of my students have stated candidly that learning about CST is pointless when they fail to see Catholic institutions living up to the tradition's own ideals. Violations of the church's own social teaching often challenge the faith of Catholic students. As Johannes Baptist Metz has argued, many young Christians yearn for a church that adopts more “radicalism” in the struggle for social justice and less “doctrinal rigorism.”Footnote 156 In recent decades, one out of three baptized Catholics has left the church, often citing “hypocrisy” and “other moral failures” as reasons.Footnote 157 While many young Catholics remain either disillusioned with the church or have abandoned it altogether, research also shows that young Catholics want to know that their faith makes a difference in the world.Footnote 158 In his study of young adult Catholics, Dean Hoge concluded that “if the relationship between social justice and a specifically Catholic identity were more immediate to young adult Catholics, their perspective might be more concerned with structural approaches, aggregate effects, power and institutional systems—in keeping with contemporary church teaching regarding social justice.”Footnote 159 Thus, confronting injustices on our campuses and illuminating how CST positively influences our institutions is vital to the faith formation of our students.
Standing in solidarity with workers on our campuses by promoting their rights is a component of the evangelizing mission of Catholic universities. Catholic doctrine holds that evangelization must entail promulgating CST.Footnote 160 Evangelization must also include solidarity with the marginalized and the promotion of “justice and liberation from every kind of oppression.”Footnote 161 In Ex Corde Ecclesiae John Paul II argued that in addition to teaching the truth of the gospel, Catholic universities must evangelize by “upsetting, through the power of the Gospel, humanity's criteria of judgment, determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and models of life, which are in contrast with the Word of God and the plan of salvation.”Footnote 162 The university's task in evangelization is thus to be “a living institutional witness to Christ and his message, so vitally important in cultures marked by secularism, or where Christ and his message are still virtually unknown.”Footnote 163 In his recent apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis has recalled this dimension of the mission of Catholic universities, which are “outstanding environments for articulating and developing this evangelizing commitment in an interdisciplinary and integrated way.” According to Francis, Catholic universities must serve as a “valuable resource for the evangelization of culture” and search for appropriate ways of undertaking this endeavor in situations where cultural currents and dominant trends oppose the values of the gospel.Footnote 164 Thus, an essential element of the mission of every Catholic university is challenging the dominant paradigm of the corporatized university and the broader neoliberal agenda in order to render the gospel credible in a pervasive, institutionalized culture that rejects it.Footnote 165 In order to achieve this goal, the university must demonstrate the possibility of creating structures and policies imbued with the values and principles of CST. “Today more than ever,” as John Paul II put it, “the Church is aware that her social message will gain credibility more immediately from the witness of actions than as a result of its internal logic and consistency.”Footnote 166 More than two thousand years earlier, Jesus of Nazareth thus admonished his disciples, “You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matt 7:16–18).Footnote 167 Therefore, in order for a Catholic university to preserve its identity and foster its mission, it must be “animated by the spirit of Christ” and characterized by “mutual respect, sincere dialogue, and protection of the rights of individuals.”Footnote 168
To summarize, in the light of Catholic teaching on unions, higher education, and evangelization, the unionization of adjuncts cannot be considered a threat to the mission of Catholic universities. Rather, union busting seriously undermines the evangelizing mission of Catholic universities. In order to be the countercultural “sign of contradiction” (Luke 2:34) that recent popes have challenged Catholic universities to be, they should do everything possible to militate against the nefarious war against workers ongoing today, not partake in it. Appealing to the right to religious freedom to shirk this responsibility cheapens the church's witness to the gospel. Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) rightly claimed the freedom for the church to preach the gospel. However, preaching the gospel requires promoting justice and the human rights of all.Footnote 169 Thus, it is a non sequitur to argue that the state compelling a Catholic institution to uphold its own teaching on the right to unionize—a “basic right” according to Gaudium et Spes—violates its religious freedom.
This article has demonstrated that forbidding unions on Catholic campuses will not bring about a more loving and harmonious employer-employee relationship. When administrators, trustees, or their lawyers raise this contention, the option for the poor urged by CST requires giving precedence to the voices of the marginalized. In this particular situation, these are the voices of adjunct faculty, not administrators who fight their efforts to unionize. Catholic teaching holds that the marginalized and oppressed have an epistemological advantage in ascertaining the truth about situations of injustice. Saint Paul told impoverished Christians in Corinth that they were chosen to educate the wise about the reign of God.Footnote 170 As Pope Francis put it, we must be “docile and attentive to the cry of the poor. . . . We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. . . [and] acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives.”Footnote 171 Thus, if the majority of adjuncts maintain that unionizing will better foster the recognition of their rights as workers on Catholic campuses, they should be heard and acknowledged. Catholic teaching insists that workers have the right to unionize themselves or not. According to the USCCB, administrators, bishops, managers, and trustees at Catholic institutions may not usurp that right for any reason.Footnote 172 Fears of increasing labor costs, whether real or unfounded, cannot legitimize violating the right of adjuncts to unionize.
Catholic teaching holds that when certain basic human rights, such as the right to unionize, are not protected by law, they remain in jeopardy. In order to truly protect a human right, its realization must not be left up to the predilection of those who hold power over other human beings. According to CST, the state and other institutional structures must defend such basic rights today, just as the state needed to defend the rights of workers during earlier phases of “primitive capitalism.”Footnote 173 Therefore, the church and church-related institutions such as Catholic universities should work with the state to strengthen the right to unionize. If necessary, Catholic institutions should promote changes to parts of the NLRA that do not advance worker-management partnerships and employee participation. Hiding behind a religious exemption from the legal protection of workers' right to unionize enshrined in the NLRA undermines the credibility of Catholic institutions of higher education, especially when many adjuncts are already denied the right to a just wage and health care. Catholic universities have a mission that includes the promotion of solidarity and justice both in society and within their own walls.
