Fordham University Violates Union Workers’ Rights, Betraying Jesuit Values

BRONX, N.Y. – This week, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Fordham University for violating union members’ right to engage in a legally protected union action.

Fordham leadership has waged a protracted fight against the workers who perform core functions of the university, including instructing graduate students and conducting research. Since the workers first formed their union, the Fordham Graduate Student Workers (FGSW-CWA), in 2022, Fordham leadership has drawn out contract negotiations for 18 months.

On Friday, February 23, FGSW-CWA members held a union action, protected under federal labor law, distributing informational flyers about their fight for a fair contract to prospective students and their families on the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses. From all accounts, prospective students and their families engaged sympathetically with the union members.

At Rose Hill, Fordham’s administration sent security to interfere with the legally protected union activism, removing student workers from the campus area and violating a core right under federal labor law.

This is the fourth time that the union has charged Fordham with violating labor laws. The previous charges relate to misconduct in negotiations. Not content with merely obstructing negotiations, Fordham is now clamping down on employees’ legally protected rights to advocate and mobilize for better working conditions.

“As stewards of a university in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition, Fordham’s administrators ought to exemplify Catholic social teaching on the rights of labor,” said Mara Foley, a graduate instructor in Theology. “They should heed the words of Gaudium et Spes: ‘Among the basic rights of the human person is to be numbered the right of freely founding unions for working people… Included is the right of freely taking part in the activity of these unions without risk of reprisal.’ We will hold administrators at Fordham accountable for their shameful violation of these basic rights.”

“We will not be deterred either by Fordham’s illegal stalling tactics in bargaining or their illegal attempts to silence us in our activism,” said Molly Crawford, a graduate instructor in Theology. “We’re going to demonstrate this on March 18th when we rally outside of the Founders’ Dinner in support of our demands for liveable wages and equitable healthcare.”

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About CWA: The Communications Workers of America represents working people in telecommunications, customer service, media, airlines, health care, public service and education, manufacturing, tech, and other fields.

cwa-union.org @cwaunion