Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told USC President Beong-Soo Kim she was “concerned” by their move to ask the National Labor Relations Board to evaluate whether university faculty had a right to form a union in a letter Sept. 1.
USC’s full-time, part-time and adjunct research, teaching, practitioner and clinical-track (RTPC) faculty voted to unionize in June, with almost 70% of the 1,821 votes cast being in favor of forming a union.
“At a time when collective bargaining rights are under attack nationally, I was particularly concerned that the university asked the NLRB to overturn the faculty’s basic right to unionize,” Bass wrote to Kim.
Bass said that she was “disappointed to learn that USC challenged and appealed the vote.”
“I urge the university to respect the NTT [non-tenure track] faculty vote, withdraw its appeal (specifically including the claimed ground that the faculty cannot unionize), and bargain in good faith for a fair contract,” Bass wrote.
The letter comes days after City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running against Bass for mayor, called on USC to bargain with the faculty in a video posted to social media with associate professors Ryan Boyd and Helen Choi.
Provost Andrew Guzman wrote in a statement on June 1 before the results were announced that the university would be seeking to resolve legal issues around the “unprecedented size and internal differentiation” of the bargaining unit.
“For this reason, the University has asked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – in the event that a majority of ballots support representation by the United Auto Workers – to quickly review the validity of this result as the first step toward obtaining much-needed legal clarity over these issues,” Guzman wrote in the letter co-signed by Steven Shapiro, the senior vice president for health affairs.