A different kind of momentous election result has landed — this one at the University of Southern California — as a majority of more than 1,800 faculty members voted to unionize, adding to a growing labor movement among higher-education faculty in the state and nationwide.
But before the vote count ended shortly before midnight Tuesday, USC signaled that it would not accept the union victory. In a June 1 message to faculty, the university said it had asked the National Labor Relations Board to “quickly review the validity” of the vote, citing “unresolved” legal questions and the proposed unit’s “unprecedented size and internal differentiation” among job classes.
The new union would cover more than 2,700 full-time, part-time and adjunct faculty across hundreds of disciplines in 22 schools and the USC libraries. The union, as approved by the vote, would also include non-tenure-track faculty at all USC schools aside from the Keck School of Medicine.
USC administration says the union would be composed of people whose jobs are unrelated, and argues that those employees already tend to have a say in the workplace through faculty representation in the university’s shared governance process.
Union supporters contend that the thousands of workers — despite different titles and job areas — face similar dis-empowerment in their day-to-day jobs.
A total of 1,821 eligible employees participated in the vote, with pro-union ballots at 1,272 and those opposed at 549.
“Our margin of victory was incredible, which underscores the tremendous support for our union and the urgent need to improve our working conditions,” said Kate Levin, a USC associate professor of writing and union organizer.
“We are also extremely disappointed in USC’s latest delay tactic. From the beginning, the USC administration emphasized the importance of this election — they said, ‘your vote matters. Make your voice heard.’ And we did,” Levin said. “The fact that they would now refuse to honor the outcome of a democratic election because they don’t like the results is outrageous.”
A spokesperson for USC did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
Not all eligible USC faculty have been supportive. The effort drew opposition from full-time non-tenure faculty at the Gould School of Law, who said in spring that they were “unanimously opposed to the effort to include us.” The group cited American Bar Assn. accreditation standards that it said already provided workers with protections “reasonably similar to tenure” and encouraged law faculty to remain out of university unions. Some professors in pharmacy, engineering and education schools also publicly opposed unionizing.
USC opposition
In a letter published Monday, USC leaders said the university was preemptively challenging the election result because “it is important to definitively resolve these legal issues sooner rather than later, so they do not create a continuing cloud of uncertainty over whatever future directions this matter takes.”
USC has opposed the union from the outset. When organizers went public in 2024, the university said it had “serious concerns — legal, academic, and operational — about a union purporting to represent almost all of our research, teaching, practitioner, and clinical faculty.”
Administrators argued that a union would hurt — not help — workers who have complained about pay, hours and benefits amid rising costs. But organizers contended that a union would give them the legal right to a seat at the table in decisions about their jobs.
The new union, United Faculty-UAW, would be affiliated with the United Auto Workers, which has grown from an auto manufacturing labor organization to one that represents journalists, higher-education faculty, aerospace and defense workers and a variety of white-collar professionals in other fields.
Unions representing graduate workers, adjuncts and non-tenure-track instructors have organized in recent years at several campuses, including New York University, Columbia and Harvard. Many — including at those three institutions — are represented by UAW. Higher-education workers today account for a quarter of its 400,000 members.
The USC count followed a March NLRB office decision allowing an election to proceed after USC lobbied the labor board to stop it. The university had asked the board to throw out the union drive filing, echoing anti-union arguments made by Amazon and Starbucks during union pushes from those companies that painted the labor board as unconstitutional.
Budgetary matters associated with unionization may also be a concern at USC, which laid off more than 1,000 workers and cut spending last year amid a greater than $200-million deficit. USC President Beong-Soo Kim has said the university is on track to be in the black by the end of this fiscal year. But unionization usually raises costs for an employer through payroll, legal bills and other fees associated with providing benefits.
USC already has three other UAW-affiliated unions, representing part-time and adjunct instructors in the School of Cinematic Arts, graduate student workers, and postdoctoral scholars.
Across the UC system, UAW 4811 represents about 48,000 academic workers, many of whom took part in a weeks-long strike in 2022. Last month, AFSCME Local 3299 — which represents 40,000 UC service and patient-care workers as well as electricians, dining workers and other job groups — reached a deal that averted a strike.
The post USC faculty groups vote to unionize and university vows to challenge it appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
