Marquette University. Photo by Ed Bierman. (CC PAR 2.0)

Marquette University leaders invoke a religious exemption in federal labor law to not recognize non-tenured faculty unionization efforts.

Dozens of non-teaching employees of the university’s Klingler College of Arts and Sciences spent most of last year organize a union with the United Campus Workers of Wisconsin (UCW-WI). Most non-teaching staff have signed cards authorizing UCW-WI to represent them, according to the union. Staff are organizing around “unfair wages, short-term contracts and increasing workloads, all concerns that motivated them to unionize,” according to the union.

But the university refuses to recognize the union and invokes a religious exemption to avoid union elections by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB held that religious institutions are exempt from board oversight “under a broad interpretation of religious liberty.” according to at Fisher Phillips, a national law firm specializing in employment and management law.

“To protect the direct relationship with our faculty that is essential to our Catholic and Jesuit intellectual life at Marquette, the university invokes its legal right of religious exemption from the oversight of the National Labor Relations Board,” the president wrote and interim dean, Dr. Kimo Ah Yun and Vice President and General Counsel Ralph Weber in a open letter to students and staff.

Ah Yun and Weber said the university’s 147-year history as a “Catholic and Jesuit institution” entitled it to this exemption.

“Ultimately, the religious exemption is about the Constitution’s First Amendment protection of religious freedom from government regulation – widely considered one of America’s most important rights,” they wrote .

The union responded with an editorial in the student newspaper, pointing the finger at Catholic institutions and leaders, such as Pope Franciswho expressed their support for the unions.

“We ask university leaders to open their hearts and minds to the ways in which unionization can strengthen the Catholic and Jesuit identity and ministry of the university, rather than remaining attached to the fallacious idea that our identity and our Catholic and Jesuit values ​​exclude collective bargaining with teachers,” he said. union wrote.

University leaders say the institution and its students are “best served by working collaboratively with all of our faculty,” and they have called the union an outside third party.

This definition of unions as “third parties” is common in opposition to unionizationas is the emphasis on maintaining the status quo that workers are organizing against.

Ah Yun and Weber wrote that the university has taken steps to improve employment conditions for non-tenured professors. The university has even implemented a number of changes made in recent years regarding employment contracts, compensation, promotion and professional development.

The union continues to assert its legitimacy and has found support for its campaign among some students and staff. He recently filed two petitions – one signed by students, the other by tenured professors – calling for recognition of the university.