News

January 26, 2008

Teachers try Vatican appeal

U.S. high court no option, so union out to represent Catholic schools will try papal ambassador to overrule Scranton Diocese.

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter
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Because of a little-known but critical U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1979, the union hoping to represent local Catholic school teachers has no legal recourse in fighting rejection by the Diocese of Scranton. An appeal directly to the Vatican is, however, allowed under church law, and one is being filed.

“We are not covered by the labor law,” said Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers President Michael Milz.

The traditional path for private sector workers who want to unionize is to “demonstrate a showing of interest” to the National Labor Relations Board, Wilkes University business professor Anthony Liuzzo said. That typically means providing a petition or similar documents showing at least 30 percent of the employees want to unionize; it also works in reverse when a private company is unionized and employees want to decertify the union.

Public employees in the state – municipal, county and state workers, including public school teachers - fall under the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act, but the process to unionize would be similar, Liuzzo said.

In the vast majority of cases regarding private companies, “an employer can’t just say we don’t want a labor union and the union has to go away,” Liuzzo said. If employees can show there’s enough interest, the NLRB will require an election, “And if the union wins, they are in whether the employer wants them or not.”

While Liuzzo could not recall any rulings that exempted religious organizations from that process, Milz said there was one that very few people know about.

“It’s called NLRB vs. the Catholic Bishop of Chicago,” Milz said. In it, the U.S. Supreme Court split 5-4 in support of a lower court’s decision that the NLRB had no jurisdiction over Catholic school teacher union efforts.

The case began in 1975 when lay teachers at two Chicago seminaries run by the diocese voted to unionize. The bishop refused to bargain with them, and the union filed a complaint with the NLRB. The NLRB decided it had jurisdiction and ordered the bishop to accept the union. The diocese appealed.

The Court of Appeals denied the NLRB’s enforcement, citing protections under the First Amendment.

The opinion noted: “The real difficulty is found in the chilling aspect that the requirement of bargaining will impose on the exercise of the bishop’s control of the religious mission of the schools.”

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, a similar situation had developed at five schools in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend (Ind.), and that case was folded into the Chicago one. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, saying the original National Labor Relations Act and the “legislative history” did not clearly grant jurisdiction to the NLRB, and that “the Court will not construe the Act in such a way as would call for the resolution of a difficult and sensitive First Amendment question.”

The majority opinion was penned by Chief Justice Warren Burger. Justice William Brennan wrote the dissenting opinion, arguing that the majority risked remaking laws by interpreting congressional intent too broadly.

For Milz and the union, the bottom line to all the legalese is simple: “We’re on our own.” But that doesn’t mean the union is going to fold up shop.

“There is a canonical recourse,” Milz said. Church law allows the union to file what amounts to an appeal with the pope. “We can say we have a bishop not acting consistent with the fashion of church teachings.” Of course, Milz conceded, that means the union is asking other bishops to rule that Bishop Joseph Martino is in the wrong.

This procedure would actually be done through Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See in the United States, a title that makes him the Vatican’s ambassador and the main papal authority overseeing all dioceses in this country.

It’s the same tactic tried unsuccessfully by parents angered over the decision to close four Luzerne County Catholic high schools and open a new one in the former Bishop Hoban building in Wilkes-Barre. They filed an appeal with Sambi in February. It was rejected in April, taking much of the last wind out of what had been a strong effort to save some of the high schools.

Other than the canonical appeal, the union has limited options. Milz said there is an effort to get parents, teachers and students to ask the diocese to reverse the decision, and the union is determined to exhaust every avenue. But in the end, “one of two things is going to happen,” he said. “Either we turn this around – and we believe we’re going to be successful – or we just walk away.”

That could be more disastrous to the diocese than simply watching the union dissolve, Milz said. “I think a lot of people will just walk away.” He said there was a similar case in Boston where the diocese restructured the school system and rejected union representation under the new plan. Although teachers were happy with the initial raises and treatment, “Things changed dramatically. Within two years, 70 percent of the teachers resigned.

“There’s a lesson here, I think.”

On the Web

To read the 1979 Supreme Court ruling, go to www.timesleader.com .

Mark Guydish, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7161.

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