The SEIU was obviously just looking for new dues paying members. They’re out of luck now.

Greg Piper of the College Fix reports.

Major Union Handily Defeated As Adjunct Professors Reject Unionization

Last month’s vote to unionize by Hamline University’s adjunct faculty apparently had little effect on its fellow Minnesota private school, the University of St. Thomas, whose adjuncts resoundingly voted against joining the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) this week.

The 136-84 St. Thomas vote against unionizing showed a rare setback for the union’s Adjunct Action project, which had boasted of a steady stream of schools’ adjuncts voting to unionize, including at a fellow Jesuit school, Georgetown University.

The union pushed ahead at St. Thomas despite calling off a similar election in June at nearby Macalester College “amid growing dissent about the vote,” the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.

A marketing professor at St. Thomas, Kim Sovell, told the Star-Tribune she wasn’t anti-union “but I’m anti being ramrodded … or rushed into making a decision,” especially when her job in the business school could be axed if the adjuncts unionized.

The College Fix previously reported that several St. Thomas adjuncts publicly argued against unionizing – quoted in the local media, writing their own opinion pieces and even filing alternative proposals – in the runup to the vote. One even accused the SEIU of scheduling a summer vote so most adjuncts would be absent from campus.

The administration crowed over the vote in a press release, saying the SEIU has until Monday to file formal objections about the campaign or election.

President Julie Sullivan, who is nearing her one-year anniversary at the school, described union contracts as “rigid and inflexible” and said she wanted to retain the Jesuit school’s “unique mission” in a campus email, the Star-Tribune said. She held half a dozen meetings with adjuncts in the weeks leading up to the vote.