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Unions Take On Catholic Schools - The First Amendment can’t protect schools that lose sight of their religious mission
By Nicholas G. Hahn III March 10, 2016 The Wall Street Journal
When the Service Employees International Union began to help organize adjunct faculty at Catholic universities, many expected school administrators to bless the effort as a blow for social justice. After all, religious higher education often comes tinged with progressive politics. But some school leaders, including those at Loyola University in Chicago, are bucking the pro-union stereotype.
Over the university’s objection, some non-tenure-track instructors at Loyola recently voted to join a local SEIU chapter certified by the National Labor Relations Board. During the unionization debate, Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Reporter had asked “how can Loyola invoke its religious character to defend against a union organizing effort when denying the right to organize runs completely contrary to that religious character?”
But when it comes to labor unions, Catholic Church teaching isn’t exactly doctrinal. There can be a legitimate disagreement about the role of unions without anyone running the risk of heresy. Mr. Winters’s question reflected a side of the debate that cites Pope Leo XIII’s hope in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum that workingmen’s unions will “become more numerous and more efficient.”
On the other side are those like the Rev. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute, who pointed out in a 2012 online post: “The right to join a union, in Church teaching, is rooted in the natural right of association, which of course also means that people have the right not to associate.”
By Nicholas G. Hahn III March 10, 2016 The Wall Street Journal
When the Service Employees International Union began to help organize adjunct faculty at Catholic universities, many expected school administrators to bless the effort as a blow for social justice. After all, religious higher education often comes tinged with progressive politics. But some school leaders, including those at Loyola University in Chicago, are bucking the pro-union stereotype.
Over the university’s objection, some non-tenure-track instructors at Loyola recently voted to join a local SEIU chapter certified by the National Labor Relations Board. During the unionization debate, Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Reporter had asked “how can Loyola invoke its religious character to defend against a union organizing effort when denying the right to organize runs completely contrary to that religious character?”
But when it comes to labor unions, Catholic Church teaching isn’t exactly doctrinal. There can be a legitimate disagreement about the role of unions without anyone running the risk of heresy. Mr. Winters’s question reflected a side of the debate that cites Pope Leo XIII’s hope in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum that workingmen’s unions will “become more numerous and more efficient.”
On the other side are those like the Rev. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute, who pointed out in a 2012 online post: “The right to join a union, in Church teaching, is rooted in the natural right of association, which of course also means that people have the right not to associate.”