UCW-WI at National Catholic Reporter
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Marquette University uses religious exemption to squash unionizing efforts
By Heidi Schlumpf
November 25, 2024
By day, students at Marquette University may have Daniel Collette as their philosophy professor, but at night, he could be their Uber driver or DoorDash delivery person.
The divorced dad of two also has had to give blood to make enough money to make ends meet.
Collette is a full-time faculty member at the Jesuit university in Milwaukee and he has a doctoral degree. But as a "non-tenure-track" employee, he makes about a third less than other faculty on the tenure track. The typical non-tenure-track salary at Marquette is about $43,000, according to faculty who spoke to NCR. (Marquette does not publish salary information.)
"I am truly tired to the bone," Collette told NCR. "It affects me, my health, my kids — and my students as well. The fact of the matter is that I'm not able to give them the same attention I would if I could just do my one job."
Collette has joined other non-tenure-track faculty from Marquette's Klingler College of Arts and Sciences who are seeking to unionize to address issues of salary, workload and other disparities between tenure-track and non-tenure-track employees. He says the union could be "life-changing" for him.
But Marquette is using a religious exemption to refuse to recognize the union — a move the pro-union faculty and their supporters say goes against the school's own mission and Catholic identity.
