First off, this is only about adjunct and contingent faculty: under law having nothing to do with religious matters, full time faculty at private colleges and universities are considered “managers,” and not eligible to organize.
Again, we are talking about part time faculty who usually receive no more thaN 1/3 the wage per class as full-timers, who have semester contracts, or otherwise temporary contracts, caps on the hours they may teach, and few if any benefits as far as pension or health–most often none.
At colleges and universities throughout the country–religious or not–“adcon” faculty are the majority now. Good, full time positions in academia have been disappearing, as in other sectors, for decades.
More generally, ask yourself, what is a “religious” institution? One with a small number of top administrators only, or mainly, self-described as “religious,” with almost all of the work and mission carried out in a purely “secular” way by almost all of the institution’s other employees?
Because that is the best way to describe the Catholic colleges and universities engaged currently in a struggle over NLRB jurisdiction.
NLRB jurisdiction in these cases does not force Catholic Colleges and Universities to compromise or capitulate in regard to religious convictions. At CCU’s now, religious and secular functions– and there there’s a lot more of the latter– are usually, though not always, carried out by quite separate groups. I follow in my thinking an idea developed by AFL-CIO in an amicus filed on behalf of the Manhattan College adjunct union.
http://www.manhattan.edu/sites/default/files/ManhattanCollege_v_ManhattanCollegeAdjunctFaculty.pdf
It seems to me the most sensible. It’s an interpretation of the Supreme Court decision in Catholic Bishop, from which thinking much else seems to flow. It has led to an unfortunate and not well-reasoned emphasis on determining whether or not a whole institution is “religious.” When, as in the case of many if not all CCU’s it is obvious that most faculty, by far, are not performing functions that most citizens would regard as “religious,” why, then, require a uniform label to be pasted on the entire assemblage? The better path, according to the AFL-CIO brief, is to make a reasonable and good-faith effort to determine “whether faculty members in the petitioned-for unit “perform a religious function.” That does not give the NLRB the right to decide whether or not the place is “not Catholic enough” in an unexamined and I agree glib manner, and indeed some NLRB procedures and approaches should probably change. But, we are simply not talking, here, about “religious” institutions, and it seems a big stretch to claim that religious conviction is under pressure. We’ll see, as these cases proceed.