CB> "A three-judge panel of the New Jersey Superior Court has ruled that 
CB> lay 
CB> elementary school teachers in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden 
CB> have the
CB> right to organize and bargain collectively.  
    I can imagine no non-public workforce less suited to unionization than 
Catholic schools.
    Collective bargaining relies on all workers in the bargaining unit having 
a commonality of interest when it comes to negotiating a contract.  Catholic 
schools, though, have lay teachers in direct economic competition with 
very-low-pay nuns and brothers who are their colleagues.  
    If a bargaining unit was defined as solely the lay teachers, would the 
diocese be violating its legal duty to "bargain in good faith" if it sought 
to minimize the number of lay teachers by staffing as much as possible with 
nuns and brothers?  Existing labor-relations law just doesn't lend itself to 
this workforce at all well!
    And if the bargaining unit was defined as _all_ the teachers, there would 
be no commonality of interest and the nuns/brothers would feel they had 
nothing to gain from the union local.  Would such a bargaining unit ever be 
able to get sufficient votes to authorize a strike?  (Or would nuns/brothers 
simply refuse to join, claiming compulsory union membership violated their 
First Amendment rights?)
--- Simplex BBS (v1.07.00Beta [DOS])
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