When Union Activism Clashes with Workers’ Religious Beliefs

A s Jay Kaplan walked through the Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of Chicago wearing a “Bring Them Home Now” dog tag supporting the Hamas-held hostages, protesters followed and filmed him. “Antisemitism abounded” at the encampment, said Kaplan, a doctoral candidate in molecular engineering. But his graduate student union championed the cause in emails and on social media, offering to help members facing university discipline. The union also committed itself to the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, whose co-founder Omar Barghouti rejects the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in Israel, their ancestral home. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “the BDS movement doesn’t seek a two-state solution; it aims to dismantle the Jewish state.”

Kaplan was required to join the graduate union, with its $648 yearly dues, or forgo membership but pay it an equivalent amount as an “agency fee.” That’s because of an Obama-era National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that in 2016 turned graduate students like Kaplan into employees. It makes them subject to unionization and payment of dues as a condition of their academic positions in private-sector institutions, except in 26 states with right-to-work laws that make union membership or payments voluntary.

If he bucked the requirement at UChicago, Kaplan would be terminated from his program. “The thought of paying money to a union that actively trashes my homeland and my beliefs made me sick,” Kaplan, who is Jewish, told me. His religious identity is tied to the land of Israel, which is deeply embedded in Jewish text, prayer, and ritual practice. He requested and eventually received a religious exemption under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, which allows private-sector employees to divert their union dues or agency fees to charities, as it protects “all aspects of religious observance and practice as well as belief.”

With the number of graduate student unions across the U.S. increasing dramatically following the NLRB decision, more who are dedicated to their faith have turned to Title VII. Like Kaplan, they view the religious-objector route as a way of limiting their association amid a surge in union activism for ideologies that are irreconcilable with their deeply held beliefs.

But despite Title VII’s broad view of religion — lack of ritual observance is not necessarily a disqualifier, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulations stipulate — exemption-seekers are hitting hurdles as the urgency to disengage from their unions intensifies.

Following the October 7 massacre in Israel, the volume of inquiries regarding religious objection “skyrocketed” from a yearly handful at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), attorney Glenn Taubman told me. It is fueled by unions’ turbocharged promotion of BDS and their public statements opposing Israel’s right to exist.

And as word spreads among campus faith communities, Jewish and Christian, more are filing for exemptions without contacting the foundation or other pertinent resources. Among the objectors are Catholics opposed to their graduate unions’ support of abortion. For Dartmouth graduate student Anthony Ragazzi, it was “a step too far,” and he felt “morally obligated” to disassociate from the union while also ensuring that his redirected payments don’t fund embryonic stem cell research.

Significantly, more Christians now also hold that their religious beliefs are violated by their unions’ positions on Israel. A Ph.D. student who is an Ethiopian Christian and asked to remain anonymous said he is not against unionizing but was “extremely disturbed” when his union expressed support for protests on his campus that included antisemitic chants calling for the elimination of Israel.  “We really value the relationship that God, as described in the Bible, has with the people of Israel, and the belief in the one true God, that’s what we base our whole faith on,” he told me. But the objector process was taxing for him, emblematic of the challenges several others say they’ve faced. As the risk of dismissal from his program hung over him, his union responded with an exemption only after almost three months and only after he threatened to file a complaint with the NLRB.

Nor did the union or school make him aware of his religious rights under Title VII, leaving him to learn about them from a friend. He was notified only of the option to become a Beck objector, which exempts nonmembers from paying agency fees for union activities not directly related to collective bargaining, such as political expenses. But unlike those with religious exemptions, anyone exercising Beck rights must pay some amount to the union.

Moreover, a successful outcome isn’t necessarily guaranteed. Now-former MIT graduate student William Sussman initially was denied a religious exemption. The national union challenged him with claims that Judaism doesn’t “prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees to a labor union,” even though there is no Title VII requirement for a religion to have such a doctrine. The union argued also that Sussman’s objections to its endorsement of BDS were based on politics, not religion.

It was a brazen attempt to erase the connection between Israel and Judaism. This bond was captured in a recent Pew Research Center study of U.S. Jews, which found that 88 percent who describe themselves as Jewish when asked about their religious identity said that caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. The union reversed course after Sussman and other MIT students, assisted by the NRTW, filed discrimination charges with the EEOC.

While that victory led to others, Title VII falls short for religious objectors who want complete disengagement but are tethered by the requirement that their union continue to represent them.  A Christian graduate student at Dartmouth has filed discrimination charges with the EEOC after his union at the private college refused his request to be removed from the bargaining unit because of his religious beliefs. And while there is no compulsory unionism in public sector jobs, and no mandatory payments for nonmembers following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME in 2018, the Court last month refused to hear a case involving professors at City University of New York (CUNY) who object to forced representation by a union they consider antisemitic.

The tension isn’t limited to higher education. A doctors’ union and K–12 teachers’ unions, among others, are platforming similar positions, with members of faith frequently unaware of their rights. H.R. 8573, a congressional bill requiring unions to notify members of their Title VII and Beck rights, was a positive step. But much more is needed to guarantee that cutting ties is seamless for religious objectors.

Just as unions are free to agitate for positions that stray from core concerns of wages and work conditions, it stands to reason that employees whose faith conflicts with those ideologies likewise should be free: from funding, and in any way associating with, unions promulgating them.