Nonprofit Sector Unionization and Gender Equity

Abstract

This article examines issues that arose between a large Catholic archdiocese and its elementary school teachers when the latter organized to form a union to negotiate over wages, benefits, working conditions, and grievance procedures. Similar tensions are likely to reoccur in archdioceses across the country as the number of nuns continues to decline and parochial schools are forced to hire lay teachers. The St. Louis, Missouri, story underscores the gender inequity inherent in this area of nonprofit organizations’ labor relations; indeed, gender equity is the silent and heretofore invisible dimension driving major developments observed in the St. Louis experience. Similar gender equity-!oriented developments likely lie ahead in labor relations in the nonprofit sector as it expands its role in the contemporary hollow state of American government.