[Posted 9/4/20; expanded 9/5/20]
This morning’s New York Times has an article about Brooklyn Friends School (BFS) titled A Quaker School Promoted Liberal Values. Then Its Teachers Unionized. (The print version is headlined “Quaker Values Tested As Teachers Unionize At a Brooklyn School.”) The subtitle reads “Brooklyn Friends, a private school, is trying to dissolve a faculty and staff members’ union.”
I’m sure this is causing a great deal of pain and anguish not only within the Brooklyn Friends School community, but also within the wider world of Friends.
The NYTimes article doesn’t do Brooklyn Friends any favors. The gist — as the headline trumpets — is that BFS isn’t living up to its own values. Hypocrisy in the frame. The Times does take care to link to the BFS Board’s letter to its community on the matter. It also quotes the newish head of school, Crissy Cáceres as saying “Quaker decision-making isn’t by majority rule. … “It’s an earnest process of human relational engagement that’s focused on not just what is my need, but what is our experience?”
The BFS Board is seeking to decertify the union on religious grounds. [Correction: Not decertify, but rather modify the terms of engagement allowed by NLRB between the union and the school.] It is asserting that the National Labor Relations Act cannot compel an organization to have a union, even if the employees want one, IF this will run contrary to the organization’s religious beliefs or practices. Says an FAQ circulated by the Board:
It is our belief that such a community is created best through deep conversations between colleagues, students, and school leadership, often on an individual basis, to reach unity about what it means to promote spirituality at a Friends School and then to develop action steps to implement what they conclude. Based on our experience, we believe that a collective bargaining relationship regulated by the NLRB is inimical to the Quaker decision-making process that is essential to achieving unity about our spiritual community, and thus to providing the best education for children. We believe unity is present in our community but out of reach until we can directly communicate with each other.
I want to pause here to say that my own progressive politics and my commitment to Quakerism arose at about the same time. After graduate school, my first position was at Temple University, chosen in part because its faculty had recently unionized. I was a faculty member — and a union member — there for nearly two decades. Over those same years (the ’70s and the ’80s) I became an attender, and then a member of the Religious Society of Friends. In the years since, I’ve grown increasingly interested in the ways that progressive political values and Quaker faith and practice sometimes walk the same roads and sometimes do not.
One of the things I wrestled with at Temple was the argument that faculty should not unionize because they participate in governance and thus are, in part, an aspect of management, not just workers. At Temple, it rarely seemed like the faculty were part of management. But at a Friends School where everyone’s voice is sought?
Mostly the world (to the extent it is interested at all) sees Quakerism as framed by progressive values. And indeed, in pursuit of equality, peace and environmental stewardship, Quakers (or at least many Quakers) can seem like one faction of a wider progressive political movement. But that way of looking at things shoulders aside the religious aspect of Quakerism. For many Friends, the religious aspect is foundational; the values (or the “testimonies” in Quaker speak) are something that grows out of that foundation.
I am no party to this conflict at BFS and I am sure there is a great deal worth knowing that I do not know. Still, I can see that the NYTimes article is not hearing what the BFS Board is saying. I’m sure that’s frustrating for them.
How does Quakerism see unions? The Times quotes Stephen Angell, professor of Quaker Studies at Earlham School of Religion as saying “quite frankly, Quakers don’t have that level of clarity on the unionizing process.” He’s also quoted as saying that the Brooklyn Friends management is “a bit self serving and presumptuous” for voicing strong views about the incompatibility of Quakerism and unionization. (No one is quoted as saying those who believe there IS such compatibility might also be seen as self serving or presumptuous.) Drew Smith, executive director of Friends Council on Education, is quoted as saying that “the council had no stance on the role of unions in Quaker schools, though few schools affiliated with the organization had them.”
Were I advising the BFS Board, I’d urge them to speak more clearly and forcefully about religious practices — to frame the matter around practices rather than values.
For one thing, the values that Quakers lift up we see as universal values, not Quaker ones — and not progressive or partisan ones. It is not adherence to those values that makes us Quakers.
Rather, Quakers see themselves as committed to seeking God’s guidance in all matters, or at least in all important matters. That seeking we do in various ways, but especially through ‘waiting worship,’ stilling ourselves to be open to hearing what God is saying to us. Quakers are committed to this way of doing things even (or especially) in the conduct of business. Thus, when Quakers conduct business, they do so in the context of worshipping together, gathering, in silence to begin with, to seek God’s will.
In that silence, in order to be led by God, we need to lay down a great deal: the ordinary concerns of the day, to be sure, but also, and most importantly, our own wants and interests. To hear and to follow God’s leadings, we have to lay down our own strivings. That is a spiritual discipline at the heart of Quakerism.
It is a spiritual or religious discipline that is sharply different from the ways of the world where we are encouraged and expected to assert our interests, to voice our wants, and to contest with others to have those interests satisfied.
That is the nub of why unionization can be seen as antithetical to Quaker religious practice. Unionization is a lifting up of interests, a joining them together, a making them stronger by such connections. In the ordinary ways of this world, that may well be a good thing, a progressive thing. I certainly think it is in many places and settings. Indeed in most.
But it is not the Quaker religious way. The Quaker way would have everyone who participates in governance — and that would be pretty much everyone — strive to participate in a way that lays down rather than lifts up self-interest.
Hearing from everyone, direct, open communication: these are very good things. But they are not a sufficient description of or basis for Quaker decision-making. Everyone’s voice should be welcome, even voices that articulate strong self-interest. Religiously-based Quaker decision-making, however, should not be organized or institutionalized in a way that draws self-interest into the process; rather it should be organized in a way that asks that self-interest be laid down or set aside.
It may be hard to trust Quaker business practice especially if you are not a Friend. It may be that a Quaker school involves too many people who are not Quakers to fully adopt the practices of Friends. It may ask too much to expect that non-Friends will enter into governance by laying down self-interest. The consensus-seeking practices of Quaker business practice may become simply an exercise of patience, generosity and good colleagueship. But if so, a Quaker school will have lost something of its Quaker religious foundation. That foundation lies in organizing itself as a community to seek God’s will.
Unionization is not a road to seeking God’s will. It is a road to better balancing the contest of interests between management and workers.
Thy will be done, not my will: that is the Quaker religious way. I think that is what the BFS Board is seeking to lift up — or what I hope it is.
Two final notes. First, The Brooklyn Friends School Board does not describe the school’s decision-making process in the way that I have. Here’s what they say in their FAQ:
We strongly believe that the process of Quaker decision-making involves a commitment to authentic and open communication between individuals as well as groups within the BFS community. In that communication we collaboratively seek creative solutions and engage in deep listening with humility and respect to reach unity on concrete ways to move forward.
For me, this is a good statement as far as it goes, but it does not really give an account of how and why unity might be achieved. Authentic and open communication are very good things but they may lead to further conflict. For Friends, the assurance of unity comes from a confidence that we can seek and find God’s will. It does not come simply from a good-hearted exercise of listening to one another and finding a way to satisfy all the disparate interests that are expressed. Seeing Quaker process as reconciling disparate interests can work much of the time, and is surely how many Quaker organizations view Quaker process today. But it strips Quaker business process of its religious grounding. That religious grounding provides a much stronger basis for finding unity.
Second: after the NYTimes article appeared, Friends Council on Education issued a longer statement. That statement was preceded by a note that the single quotation from Drew Smith in the article had been taken from a much longer interview and that the single quote had been “taken out of context.” The Friends Council statement has this to say:
Quaker beliefs on equity and justice often lead Quakers to take politically progressive positions on the issues of the day. These positions lead Quakers to generally support organized labor. Organized labor clearly makes a difference in our society by lifting the wages, benefits, and protections for all workers in our country.
The negotiating practices of unions are, however, in tension with the decision making practice of Quakers. Unions work to support and lobby on behalf of one side of the labor/management divide. One of the most critical truths of any Quaker community is that we do not see or treat one another as adversaries. How should a school rightly resolve this tension?
Focus on this sentence in the statement: “We do not see or treat one another as adversaries.” That is an important declaration, one true to the faith and practice of Friends. The statement also says: “there are no ‘sides’ in this practice, only a hoped-for outcome that achieves unity for a particular Quaker community.”
But how do we avoid ‘treating one another as adversaries?’ That is where the religious grounding of Friends practices becomes important. We may be adversaries (or appear to be) when we are living our ordinary lives. But not when we are standing before God. There is a basis of unity and harmony, we are sure, but that understanding comes from a confidence that there is a god (or a spirit) of truth and goodness that can be found and relied upon if we will seek it together. That makes all the difference.
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Here is the entire Friends Council on Education statement (9/04/20), distributed via email but not yet on their website:
A Message from Friends Council Regarding Brooklyn Friends School
Every Friends Council member school operates under its own governing structure that determines its own path. Friends Council’s mission and work does not include taking a position on whether or not a school’s workforce should be unionized.
Friends Council does seek to help all schools acknowledge and embrace the tensions between the peculiar practices of Quakers and the practical realities of the good management of Friends schools. In fact, much of our work involves helping schools think about their governance and spiritual structures and practice.
One of the most unique of Quaker practices is the way in which we make decisions. This practice is the result of translating what Quakers believe spiritually into a practice that honors both the individual Light within all of us and the health and well-being of the full community. One of the most important aspects of this decision making practice is that it is non-adversarial; there are no “sides” in this practice, only a hoped-for outcome that achieves unity for a particular Quaker community.
The hierarchical authority structure at Friends schools stands in tension with the full practice of Quaker decision making. Friends schools work constantly to ensure participation in decision making across constituencies and individuals, while providing clear definition about how particular decisions are being made. At our schools, we embrace this tension by making clear the process by which a particular decision is made and inviting opportunities for critical voices to be present. This tension exists in every Quaker school community, unionized or not.
Quaker beliefs on equity and justice often lead Quakers to take politically progressive positions on the issues of the day. These positions lead Quakers to generally support organized labor. Organized labor clearly makes a difference in our society by lifting the wages, benefits, and protections for all workers in our country.
The negotiating practices of unions are, however, in tension with the decision making practice of Quakers. Unions work to support and lobby on behalf of one side of the labor/management divide. One of the most critical truths of any Quaker community is that we do not see or treat one another as adversaries. How should a school rightly resolve this tension?
It is our hope that Brooklyn Friends School can find its way forward as a community. We appreciate and embrace all of the relationships that we have with the Brooklyn Friends School leadership, teachers, and staff. We hold all constituency groups of the Brooklyn Friends School in the Light as they seek a way forward through this current time of conflict.