Brook­lyn Paper and Gothamist has the news that Brook­lyn Friends School lead­er­ship is with­draw­ing its peti­tion to decer­ti­fy the teacher/staff union.

When reached by phone Wednes­day night, UAW 2110 Pres­i­dent Mai­da Rosen­stein said work­ers had won a hard-fought vic­to­ry and that Thursday’s strike will not take place. “Strike is over, it’s a total vic­to­ry,” said Rosen­stein. “It’s real­ly great that they’re going to with­draw the peti­tion, peo­ple are very hap­py to be able to go back to their jobs… We’re hop­ing for a new begin­ning here.”

At some lev­el we could shrug and say “who cares?” Like many elite East Coast Friends schools, very few of the stu­dents, teach­ers, staff, or admin­is­tra­tion at BFS are Quak­er. The school stopped being under the for­mal care of a Friends body back in 2010. It gives reports to New York Friends and par­tic­i­pates in Friends Coun­cil on Edu­ca­tion but these are rel­a­tive­ly weak ties.

But Brook­lyn Friends School’s admin­is­tra­tion brought reli­gious free­dom into its bat­tle against the union. Trump’s Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board has latched on to “reli­gious free­dom” as a union-busting strat­e­gy¹, recent­ly over­turn­ing an Obama-era rul­ing that gave reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed insti­tu­tions the right to orga­nize. The BFS lead­er­ship and its board lift­ed up their under­stand­ing of Quak­er val­ues and used it to argue their case with the NLRB. For the non-Quaker head of a nom­i­nal­ly Quak­er school to file a reli­gious lib­er­ties legal argu­ment on behalf of Quak­er reli­gious free­dom is quite a reach.

If the BFS head and board had first approached its his­toric Quak­er body — New York Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing — to for­mal­ly minute agree­ment with the BFS under­stand­ing of Quak­er val­ues, then the fil­ing with the NLRB would have had some legit­i­mate mer­it. A hundred-some years ago, Friends were an almost-exclusively White and owning-class body who lim­it­ed the num­ber of African Amer­i­can, Jews, south­ern Euro­peans², etc., in their schools ³and they would have had lit­tle trou­ble back­ing up BFS’s claim that unions aren’t com­pat­i­ble with Quak­er val­ues. There are cer­tain­ly Friends who con­tin­ue to voice con­cerns about the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Quak­er process and orga­nized labor (includ­ing some on the BFS board⁴) and I don’t want to min­i­mize their voice. But Friends are a far-more diverse body now and there’s lit­tle chance that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of New York Friends today would have come to con­sen­sus on an anti-union minute. With today’s news, we’re spared see­ing the Friend­s’s name caught up in a reli­gious free­dom cul­ture war fight not of our choosing.

Pre­vi­ous­ly: Brook­lyn Friends School strike, Union Bust­ing and Quak­erism Col­lide at Brook­lyn Friends

1. It’s also its anti-LGBTQ strat­e­gy. We need to tread care­ful­ly when we pick a side in a reli­gious free­dom case in 2020.
2. I.e., the eth­nic groups then work­ing long hours at dan­ger­ous jobs and orga­niz­ing unions.
3. We also had some “Select Schools” just for Quak­er chil­dren but I’m not talk­ing about them. I’m think­ing of the Quaker-founded schools with a token Black, Ital­ian, and Jew­ish kid in each class.
4. Do I even have to note that most non­prof­it boards are not eco­nom­i­cal­ly representative?