Faculty Collective Bargaining Rights

On May 13, 2022, the AAUP moved to file an amicus brief with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to provide the AAUP’s views on a case in which a union proposed including college and university faculty members in a collective bargaining unit with staff. The AAUP’s brief explains that, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), where the union’s proposed unit is given deference: (1) bargaining units that include faculty and staff employed at institutions of higher education are not categorically barred, provided that faculty members are given a mechanism to express their desires on...

On March 16, 2021, the AAUP submitted an amicus brief in the Oregon Court of Appeals explaining that “shared governance” did not protect an administration’s distribution of material violating Oregon’s union neutrality law. The appeal arose from an Oregon Employment Relations Board decision finding that Oregon State University had violated a state law requiring neutrality in union organizing drives by authoring FAQs and distributing them to faculty. The university and an amicus brief submitted in support of its case argued that the FAQs were protected by shared governance. The AAUP amicus brief...

On January 28, 2020, in a case in which the AAUP filed an amicus brief, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (the “DC Circuit”) issued a decision finding that adjunct faculty did not have the right to unionize at a religiously affiliated university under federal labor law. Duquesne University v. National Labor Relations Board, 947 F.3d 824 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (“Duquesne”). The core issue was whether in applying federal labor law, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), to the faculty, the NLRB and the Courts would risk interfering in the religious affairs of...

On June 27, 2018, the United States Supreme Court overruled a 41 year precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977) and held that it is unconstitutional to collect agency fees from un-consenting nonmembers. For over four decades the court had repeatedly found constitutional the agency-fee system under which unions could charge an agency fee to public employees represented by those unions but who don’t want to be union members. This system was applied in twenty-two states and across thousands of labor agreements covering millions of employees. The majority’s decision...

On March 12, 2019, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in this case. On December 28, 2017, the AAUP submitted an amicus brief, written primarily by AAUP General Counsel Risa Lieberwitz, to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit urging the court to uphold the NLRB’s determination that non-tenure-track faculty at USC are not managerial employees. The brief supported the legal framework established by the NLRB in Pacific Lutheran University and describes in detail the significant changes in university hierarchical and decision-making models since the US Supreme...

Echoing arguments made by the AAUP in an amicus brief, the National Labor Relations Board held that student assistants working at private colleges and universities are statutory employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act. The 3–1 decision overrules a 2004 decision in Brown University, which had found that graduate assistants were not employees and therefore did not have statutory rights to unionize. In this case the AAUP filed an amicus brief with the Board arguing that extending collective bargaining rights to student employees promotes academic freedom and does not harm faculty...

In this case the National Labor Relations Board published a significant decision expanding the organizing rights of private-sector faculty members. The Board modified the standards used to determine two important issues affecting the ability of faculty members at private-sector higher education institutions to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act: first, whether certain institutions and their faculty members are exempted from coverage of the Act due to their religious activities; and second, whether certain faculty members are managers, who are excluded from protection of the Act...

The AAUP filed an amicus brief with the National Labor Relations Board arguing that graduate assistants at private sector institutions should be considered employees with collective bargaining rights. In its amicus brief, the AAUP argued that the board should overrule the test of employee status applied in Brown to graduate assistants, but did not take a position as to whether the unionization of college football players was appropriate.

These cases addressed whether graduate student assistants are employees who have collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act. AAUP co-signed an amicus brief and argued that the Board should overrule Brown University and return to its prior determination that graduate student assistants are statutory employees. While the case was pending, the union and NYU resolved their disputes and NYU agreed to hold a union election (which the union overwhelmingly won). Therefore, the union withdrew the election petition and the Board declined to rule on the case. The question of...

Point Park University challenged an election by faculty members to be represented by the Communications Workers of America. The university incorrectly claimed that full-time faculty members were managerial employees and therefore ineligible for union representation.