A LETTER FROM
PROVOST AND DEAN OF FACULTIES
DAVID QUIGLEY

August 21, 2017

Dear Fellow Members of the Boston College Community:

As you may know, in March the United Auto Workers, representing a group of graduate students, filed a petition with the NLRB seeking an election to become certified as union representatives of Boston College graduate students who serve as teaching, research and graduate assistants.

The United Auto Workers was able to take this action because last year the NLRB reversed a longstanding precedent that had precluded unionization of graduate students at private universities.

Boston College joined institutions as diverse as Columbia University and Seattle University in opposing recent NLRB rulings regarding higher education. Our position is that our graduate student research and teaching assistants are best characterized as students—not employees—and that the mentoring relationship to which faculty commit themselves in the scholarly training of graduate students is a partnership that differs from that of university employees or any other workplace association. We believe that the collegial relationship between our faculty and their graduate student teaching and research assistants would be irreparably altered by a change in this dynamic, at the expense of future generations of teachers, researchers and scholars.

In addition, as a Jesuit university, Boston College also asserts that it should be exempt from the jurisdiction of the NLRB with respect to the United Auto Workers’ petition because of the religious dimensions of our mission. The US Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court have consistently rejected the NLRB’s attempt to expand its authority to faith-based educational institutions, based on the unanimous 1979 Supreme Court decision NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago.

Unfortunately, the NLRB is defying this legal precedent by claiming that it is capable of determining which departments and faculty within a religiously affiliated university are “secular” and which are “religious.” We oppose this thinking on the basis that all of our teaching supports our Jesuit, Catholic mission of student formation, which is at the core of liberal arts education, and that government is in no position to dictate the terms of our academic enterprise, and should not be allowed to impose on us its understanding of our religious mission.

As a result, Boston College senior administrators and several faculty provided testimony before the NLRB in Boston last semester asserting our position that our graduate assistants are best characterized as students, and in support of our argument that we as a religiously affiliated institution should be exempt from NLRB jurisdiction.

The Regional Board ruled in favor of the United Auto Workers’ petition on May 17 and informed us that they will proceed with elections for graduate student unionization in September. In response, Boston College has filed a request for review of the regional director’s decision and a motion to stay the election.

My intention with this letter is to explain our position and direct you to a webpage that will keep the Boston College community apprised of developments in this process. The website is accessible at www.bc.edu/nlrbruling.

My hope is that we as a University community will continue to build upon our rich history of excellence in graduate and professional education, and that we can continue to nourish the powerful relationships that have existed between graduate students and faculty, while addressing—in the spirit of cooperation—any issues that may arise. I look forward to working with students, faculty, and the entire University community to reaffirm our commitment to the important task of advancing the frontiers of knowledge, a project in which graduate students play such a critical part. We are a stronger University for the presence of graduate and professional programs, and I encourage all colleagues to educate themselves on the issues involved and the risks associated with potential unionization of graduate students. This decision could well have far-reaching consequences for our way of proceeding as an academic community.

Sincerely,


David Quigley
Provost and Dean of Faculties