On February 19, 2026, an email arrived in the inboxes of more than a thousand St. John's University faculty members. The message, sent by university President Rev. Brian Shanley, carried news that was equal parts blunt and historic: the Catholic institution in Queens, New York, was withdrawing recognition of its two faculty unions — the SJU chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Faculty Association — ending a collective bargaining relationship that had existed for 56 years.
No faculty vote. No legislative process. No court order. Just an email, and a half-century of labor history erased overnight.
“The administration, by de-recognizing this long-standing pair of unions, has taken away faculty control over their working conditions and the learning conditions of students," said Dr. Sophie Bell, acting president of SJU-AAUP and a professor and chair of the Department of Core Studies in St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, who has been at the university since 2007. “It is very disastrous.”
Bell's assessment captures not just the shock of the moment but the scope of what is at stake in a much larger national debate. What does the return of faculty unions to American private campuses actually mean, and when those unions are gaining ground, do institutions find ways to make the gains cost more than workers bargained for?
To understand what is happening at St. John's, it helps to understand how rare and how hard-won faculty union recognition at private universities is in the first place.
Between 2012 and 2024, the number of faculty represented by unions at private colleges and universities increased by 56 percent, according to the 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education, published by the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College. Overall, 27 percent of all U.S. faculty are now unionized, a rate that runs counter to the broader national trend, where union membership in the private sector fell from 12.5 percent in 2012 to 11.2 percent in 2023.
For graduate student workers, the growth has been even more explosive. The total number of represented graduate students increased by 133 percent over the same period, with 60 percent of that growth occurring in the private sector. As of early 2024, nearly 40 percent of all graduate student workers nationwide were covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
Bell sees that momentum firsthand in her own metropolitan backyard.
"NYU contract faculty just gained union recognition, and I think that makes them the largest full-time faculty union at a private university in the country," she said. “We're also in close touch with AAUP chapters at Hofstra and Adelphi University, very close to here. They both have collective bargaining units. And there are exciting contract recognition fights at Fordham, including among contingent faculty.”
That regional energy has given rise to a new organizing formation. Bell described a newly formed group called the Metro New York Coalition for Higher Ed, which brings together faculty from public and private universities across the region under what she called a “hands-off higher ed” framework. The coalition has held rallies, participated in protests — including one at Apollo Management, targeting financier Marc Rowan's involvement in higher education policy — and has been coordinating across campuses in ways Bell says were not possible before.
“A lot of us are in touch with each other in ways that we weren't before — offering each other support and resources and ideas,” said Bell.
This surge on private campuses is largely a product of legal architecture — specifically, the aftershocks of a 2014 National Labor Relations Board ruling known as Pacific Lutheran, which made it easier for contingent and non-tenure-track faculty to establish that they lack the managerial authority that the Supreme Court's 1980 NLRB v. Yeshiva University decision had used to deny private-sector faculty the right to unionize. Under Yeshiva, faculty can claim the right to organize only by demonstrating that they lack meaningful governance power. The more administrations have centralized authority, the more faculty qualify as employees rather than managers under federal law.
St. John's University was founded in 1870 by the Roman Catholic Vincentian priests and brothers. It carries an endowment of nearly $1 billion and a student body of approximately 16,000. For 56 of those years, its two faculty unions negotiated contracts on behalf of more than 1,000 faculty members, a relationship that survived economic downturns, enrollment fluctuations, and multiple changes in university leadership.
That relationship ended in a February email.
"Direct Engagement" vs. Collective Voice
In a statement, university spokesperson Brian Browne framed the decision as a necessary adaptation to a rapidly changing higher education landscape.
“As the landscape of higher education undergoes a profound transformation, our commitment to providing an exceptional and sustainable educational experience consistent with our mission requires us to be agile and innovative,” Browne said. The university, he added, would now work directly with faculty, adopting what it called "the direct-engagement model that is the standard for the overwhelming majority of universities nationwide."
Bell called that framing a fundamental misreading of what the union relationship has been and what it has built.
“We've had a union since the 1970s,” she said. "It's really an integral part of what St. John's is and how it operates."
She emphasized that the union's ask is, as she put it, simple: “Our goal is very simple and actually very easy. We just want Father Shanley to return to the bargaining table — which he could do at any point. He sent us an email to de-recognize the faculty union, so he can send another email and say, ‘Let's get back to bargaining and do the hard work of running this place in a way that values the expertise of teachers and the education of students.’”
Bypassing the NLRB
What makes the St. John's case especially consequential — and especially difficult to resolve — is a legal exemption that the university may use as its shield. As a religious institution, St. John's is exempted from many of the legal requirements that would compel a secular private employer to recognize a collective bargaining unit.
But the SJU faculty unions are not filing their unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB. Instead, they have taken their case to New York State's Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), arguing that the university's actions violate the New York State Employment Relations Act. The distinction is critical: state labor law may provide different — and potentially stronger — protections than the federal framework that religious-institution exemptions have been carved from.
The ULP charge alleges that since withdrawing recognition, the Shanley administration has illegally threatened and surveilled faculty union leaders and rank-and-file members and has unilaterally altered employment terms in violation of state law. Faculty union members had already been without a contract for more than 300 days by the time the charge was filed.
From Campus Rallies to Madison Square Garden
Bell described an organizing response that has grown in scale and sophistication since Shanley's email arrived. The faculty have held two major rallies. The first came directly after the February announcement, on campus. The second unfolded in March at Madison Square Garden — a deliberately chosen venue, as Bell explained with evident satisfaction:
“Despite the austerity around academic programs, our university is spending quite a bit of money on basketball. So, we went to have an alternative press conference at Madison Square Garden during the Big East Conference tournament, which our president is very involved in.”
A petition of support has gathered just under 3,000 signatures, including endorsements from at least 60 faculty union chapters from around New York City, New York State, and across the country. A May Day action is planned for May 1 outside Gate 1 of the university's campus at 8000 Utopia Parkway in Queens, to coincide with citywide International Workers Day demonstrations. Bell said the faculty are also "considering more escalating actions."
Student solidarity, she added, has been a significant and animating force.
“I think students and their families, and alum, are horrified by this move,” Bell said. “New York is a union town, and many of our students come from union families. And they're here because they care about their education, their faculty — their faculty's research is very exciting to them. They want to be part of it. The students are really behind us.”
This article is the first in a two-part series about the ongoing changes surrounding collective bargaining in higher education.
