NLRB Ruling May Lead To More Union Faculty

Union leaders in New York last week applauded a recent National Labor Relations Board ruling that could pave the way for more contingent instructors at private colleges to unionize.

The challenge emerged in 2013, when a Service Employees International Union local, which represents 7,000 employees at the University of Washington and other institutions, sought to represent the non-tenured faculty at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. The school cited a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision, NLRB v. Yeshiva University, which ruled that tenure-track faculty were considered “managerial” and thus not covered under collective-bargaining regulations.