Dive Brief:

• Adjunct professors at Point Park University in Pittsburgh have voted to form a union, 172 to 79.
• The union will be organized under United Steelworkers' Adjunct Faculty Association, which also voted to organize adjunct professors at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh in 2012.
• Point Park has fought the efforts of its full-time professors to unionize, but it pledged to accept and work with the unionized adjuncts.

Dive Insight:

Point Park’s 314 adjuncts are getting the red-carpet treatment compared to their peers at Duquesne, which has appealed its adjuncts’ union vote results to the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that because it is a Catholic school, it has a faith-based exemption from NLRB jurisdiction. Point Park has fought against its full-time professors’ attempts to form a union, arguing that the roughly 100 full-time faculty should be excluded from NLRB jurisdiction because they have managerial responsibilities. Part-time faculty at Point Park are paid $2,091 to $2,727 per course, compared to the average salaries for full-time faculty that range from $54,426 to $87,857, TribLive.com reported.