Adjunct instructors at Manhattan College are rallying for better pay and benefits, but the powers-that-be at Manhattan say that an adjunct union would threaten its heritage as a Catholic institution.
This is interesting because the adjuncts are claiming that as a Catholic university concerned with social justice, Manhattan’s decision to prohibit adjunct unions actually contradicts its mission. Inside Higher Ed reports:
An organizing drive at Manhattan College has run into a different issue: the college, a Roman Catholic institution, is asserting that its religious heritage would be threatened by an adjunct union, which would give federal officials oversight over labor relations at the college, and that federal court rulings give it the right to bar collective bargaining. The union says that its effort to get better pay and benefits for adjuncts will have no impact at all on the college’s religious mission — and that if anyone is ignoring church teachings, it is the college administrators, in not seeing the social justice behind the union drive. The National Labor Relations Board is currently holding hearings on the dispute — and the outcome (quite likely the subject of court challenges) could either expand or limit the potential for adjunct unions at private colleges.
While the dispute has been building for months now, the union is going public with petition drives and the college is countering with public statements of its own — with both sides suggesting that the other is ignoring key principles.
“This is a college that talks about being committed to social justice. Well, its adjuncts need some social justice,” said Julie Berman, an organizer for the New York State United Teachers, an affiliate of both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association that is organizing the adjuncts at Manhattan.Â
Read the entire piece here.
I'm just a fat old white guy injineer alumni of Manhattan College who happens to serve on an IT steering committee as a volunteer. I have yet to hear any adjunct issue that shows that MC is treating them badly, unfairly, or in nay way un-Chrisitian. Thus, imho, this is about something else. I can only speculate what that is: union dues, de-Catholic another institution by pushing abortion benefits, or another agenda. So I say just wait for the true motivations to emerge.