The head of a 153-year-old Quak­er school in New York City says that “Quak­er val­ues” are the rea­son she is try­ing to dis­solve the school’s labor union by using a Trump admin­is­tra­tion labor board rul­ing that allows reli­gious schools to exempt them­selves from the require­ment to bar­gain with unions. 

The labor bat­tle has arisen sud­den­ly at Brook­lyn Friends School, a pri­vate K‑12 school where tuition can run close to $50,000 per year. In May of 2019, about 200 staffers at the school vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to union­ize with UAW Local 2110. Theirs is a “wall to wall” union, includ­ing not only teach­ers, but also main­te­nance and cafe­te­ria work­ers and office staff. The union dri­ve over­lapped with the Novem­ber 2018 appoint­ment of Crissy Cac­eres as the new Head of School at BFS. Accord­ing to Mai­da Rosen­stein, pres­i­dent of UAW 2110, Cac­eres con­vened a staff meet­ing short­ly before the union elec­tion to encour­age employ­ees to vote “no,” argu­ing that a union would be anti­thet­i­cal to the Quak­er method of deci­sion mak­ing by consensus. 

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