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?”
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