After a March 20 ruling that faculty could vote to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board mailed out ballots Friday. Last week, seven long-time, non-tenure-track faculty members released a letter to the editor in the Daily Trojan calling for unionization and improved faculty conditions.
The NLRB would work with the United Auto Workers to create the union if the over 2,900 eligible voters approve it, which includes all of USC’s research, teaching, practitioner and clinical-track faculty. Ballots were mailed at 5 p.m. on April 24 to eligible voters from the National Labor Relations Board, Region 31 Office. The ballots are due May 15.
“We decided to unionize because we see that as the only real way of having more power at the workplace to actually help make some of these decisions,” said Janis Yue, an assistant professor of clinical occupational therapy and a member of the organizing committee.
“USC showed us right off the bat that they were going to fight us and take an anti-union position,” Yue said.
In December 2024, a majority of the university’s non-tenure-track faculty signed a union authorization petition to demand representation. The committee filed with majority support across all faculty to hold a union election.
USC prevented non-tenure-track faculty from unionizing and contended that those instructors serve as managers through shared governance bodies like the Academic Senate.
“[USC] held webinars that have had messaging to dissuade faculty from voting yes,” Yue said. “That should only show us how much power we have to gain from forming this union.”
In 2015, individual schools held their own elections, including USC Dornsife and Roski School of Art. For this election, however, the efforts are uniting faculty across all schools, except for the Keck School of Medicine.
“There’s more faculty involved in this process, and I think more people means more power,” Yue said. “What I’ve seen is that we’ve really been able to move things forward in a way that didn’t happen last time.”
Efforts to unionize come amid budget cuts and layoffs across the university. Although the existing Academic Senate acts as a representative body for the interests of all faculty, union advocates said faculty voices have been advisory rather than secured through legally binding contracts. Unlike tenured faculty, non-tenured faculty face more salary discrepancies and less job security.
The Undergraduate Student Government demonstrated their support for the non-tenured faculty’s right to unionize at their meeting on Tuesday night.
Their vote called for USC’s administration “to respect faculty’s right to choose whether or not to unionize,” urging the administration to prioritize the job security of their employees.
Gould’s full-time RTPC faculty declined to sign documents in support of the union. A public statement from the faculty said the proposed union “is inappropriate for law faculty in general and Gould law faculty in particular.”
Yue said the opposition is a minority voice, and there is a lot more support among other faculty in Gould.
“We are at a very historic conjecture where if we don’t take this chance, it will take many more years, if not decades, to get another opportunity like this to really significantly increase our collective power at the workplace,” Yue said.
The University did not respond to our request for comment.
Lillian Matthews contributed to this story.