On December 10, research, teaching, practitioner and clinical-track (RTPC) faculty organized under the United Auto Workers as United Faculty-UAW (UF-UAW) filed a petition for a union election, according to their Instagram. That same day, USC issued a Statement of Position that called the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) structure ‘unconstitutional.’ Once the petition was filed, USC could choose to recognize it and allow an election to happen. USC chose not to do so and instead, a hearing with the regional NLRB was organized for January 6. The assertion that the NLRB is unconstitutional was not a topic of discussion in the hearings, but it is a claim that could potentially be taken to a higher court should the NLRB rule in favor of the RTPC faculty.
The statement said, in part, that “The NLRB’s structure is unconstitutional in that it limits the removal of NLRB Administrative Law Judges and Board Members, and permits Board Members to exercise executive, legislative, and judicial power in the same administrative proceeding.”
The university declined to comment on the statement of unconstitutionality but directed Annenberg Media to three links to information shared with faculty and posted on the Provost’s website where they list their existing policies.
“These are the arguments that Starbucks and Amazon and SpaceX make about the NLRB in order to squash the right to unionize,” Michael Bodie, an associate professor of cinematic practice at USC, said. “It’s a pretty massive statement to say that the entire board, that was founded in the 1930s, and their whole role in protecting workers and workers’ rights is unconstitutional, shouldn’t even exist. That was a surprise for all of us to see that on there.”
The petition secured union authorization cards from a majority of the over 2,500 RTPC faculty across all USC schools except the Keck School of Medicine, visiting faculty, emeriti faculty and part-time and adjunct faculty in the School of Cinematic Arts.
Adjunct faculty in the School of Cinematic Arts voted to form a union in February of last year and USC is currently bargaining a contract with them.
Daniel Delgado is a PhD candidate in history at USC and a member of the Graduate Student Union’s Executive Board. He said he fully supports the RTPC union efforts.
“I think that the more workers that organize and join unions, that essentially it’ll make the university a more democratically run institution, and as a result, actually make it more equitable and better for everybody,” Delgado said in a phone interview.
If the NLRB rules in favor of the union and USC doesn’t fight it, employees can vote on union representation in a secret ballot election. If a majority votes in favor of the union, it will then move on to collective bargaining with the employer to negotiate a contract.
The hearings went on for a couple of days, starting on January 6, then were postponed due to the L.A. wildfires. They resumed on January 16 and occurred almost every day until they concluded on January 30.
In a letter from the office of the provost, USC stated that they believed their faculty are managers and supervisors and thus ineligible to unionize. In an email to faculty on December 6, USC said that under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), “faculty are deemed managerial if members are included in faculty bodies that make effective recommendations on academic programs, enrollment management policies, finances, academic policies, and personnel policies and decisions.”
Bodie, the associate professor of cinematic practice, in his almost 15 years at USC, has been a part of some of the committees that the university said make these decisions. He was a member and then a chair of the school’s Faculty Council at the School of Cinematic Arts and a member and then a co-chair of what was the RTPC Faculty Affairs Committee. Bodie said these committees are only advisory in nature, without any real enforceable powers.
“Just by doing this over the past decade, I’ve become disillusioned with this governance structure, because it doesn’t seem to really move the needle in any real way,” Bodie said in an interview with Annenberg Media.
Throughout the hearings, the RTPC faculty argued that the UF-UAW forms a community of interest and should be allowed to vote on unionization.
“Now the big, big question really is around whether part-time and adjunct faculty and full-time faculty have a shared community of interest,” Bodie asked.
In the context of a union, a shared community of interest is a group of employees who share similar working conditions, wages, benefits, skills, supervision and job duties, according to an NLRB document.
Bodie said the groups do and thus should be allowed to vote together on whether or not to unionize. USC said these groups have different titles, contracts and compensation structures, among other factors, and thus don’t share a community of interest.
“Even without legal recognition, the community that we have built right now, today, is so strong in terms of how we support each other,” Helen Choi, a senior lecturer at the Viterbi School of Engineering, said about the faculty who have chosen to unionize.
Through these hearings, if the regional NLRB rules in favor of the union, there is the possibility of an appeal to the national NLRB by the university according to the NLRB website.
President Donald Trump fired two Democratic officials at the national NLRB on January 27. He removed two appointees of Democratic former President Joe Biden, Member Gwynne Wilcox and General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. Without Wilcox, the board is left without a quorum of three members to issue decisions. If USC’s case makes it to the national NLRB, it will not be heard until the position is filled.
As the hearing phase has wrapped up, the next step in the process is the ruling by the NLRB regional board. This could take up to four months but could be sooner.
“This is not led by some outside parties,” Bodie added. “This is a faculty-led movement that wants to have a better working environment. And USC is choosing not to hear us.”