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🗞️ USC Non-Tenure Track Faculty Cleared for Union Election

An NLRB regional director has ordered a union election for ~2,750 of USC's non-tenure track faculty, rejecting the university's claims that they are managers or supervisors ineligible to organize.

onthelaborfront

23 Mar 2026 — 3 min read

On March 20, 2026, NLRB Region 31 Regional Director Danielle Pierce issued a Decision and Direction of Election ordering a secret ballot union vote among approximately 2,750 of USC's non-tenure track faculty — spanning research, teaching, practitioner, clinical, and continuing-appointment tracks across USC's Los Angeles County locations. The petitioning union, United Faculty-UAW (UF-UAW), filed its petition for the election in December 2024. The proposed unit, as described in the petition, encompassed more than 2,500 faculty members; the final directed unit of approximately 2,750 reflects the inclusion of continuing-appointment track faculty not originally named in the petition title.

USC mounted a multi-front legal challenge to block the vote. The university argued that its system of shared governance — through bodies like the Academic Senate, the Committee on Finances and Enrollment (COFE), and school-level faculty councils — gave faculty effective managerial control, disqualifying them from union protections under NLRB v. Yeshiva University (1980). USC also argued the faculty functioned as supervisors over teaching assistants and research assistants, and separately challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB itself, arguing that limits on the removal of Board members and Administrative Law Judges, and the combination of executive, legislative, and judicial functions within the same agency, violate the U.S. Constitution.

Director Pierce rejected all three arguments. Applying the Pacific Lutheran University (2014) framework, she found that faculty participation in university governance was consistently advisory — recommendations from the Academic Senate, COFE, and EBAC were routinely ignored, overridden, or simply not followed without independent review. She similarly found no evidence that RTPC faculty possessed meaningful supervisory authority over TAs or other staff. On the constitutionality question, Pierce noted the NLRB had already rejected identical claims in Portillos Hot Dogs, LLC, 374 NLRB No. 58 (Mar. 11, 2026), and declined to dismiss the petition.

On the question of whether the proposed unit was appropriate, Pierce found that the faculty — though spread across approximately 24 schools and multiple campuses — share a sufficient community of interest based on similar skills and training, shared job functions, common terms and conditions of employment, and functional integration through USC's academic mission. The lack of common supervision across departments was the one factor weighing against the unit, but was outweighed by the other factors in the aggregate.

The election is scheduled for two consecutive days during the week of April 13 or April 20, 2026, with polling locations at both the University Park Campus and the Health Sciences Campus. If a majority of eligible voters choose union representation, USC would be obligated to bargain collectively with UF-UAW.

Key Points

Who is in the unit: ~2,750 full-time, part-time, and adjunct non-tenure track faculty in research, teaching, practitioner, clinical, and continuing-appointment tracks at USC's Los Angeles County locations
Who is excluded: Tenured and tenure-track faculty; all faculty in the Keck School of Medicine; all faculty employed at Children's Hospital Los Angeles; part-time/adjunct faculty in the School of Cinematic Arts (already unionized); visiting and emeritus faculty; RTPC faculty permanently employed outside Los Angeles County
USC's core argument: Faculty are managerial employees under Yeshiva because of shared governance participation, and supervisors because they oversee TAs/RAs
NLRB's ruling: Faculty governance roles were advisory only — recommendations were routinely ignored or overridden, falling short of the "effective control" standard required to classify faculty as managers
Constitutional challenge: USC argued the NLRB's structure is unconstitutional; Pierce declined to dismiss the petition, citing the Board's recent rejection of identical claims in Portillos Hot Dogs, LLC, 374 NLRB No. 58 (Mar. 11, 2026)
Election timeline: Scheduled for the week of April 13 or April 20, 2026 — during the regular academic year, manual ballots only
Broader context: USC's graduate students unionized in 2023 and postdoctoral scholars in 2024; according to secondary reporting, nearly 27% of U.S. faculty are now represented by unions nationally
Perspectives: Faculty union organizers have cited concerns about salaries, benefits, job security, and administrative transparency as motivations for unionizing; USC has maintained that its shared governance model already provides faculty an equal voice and that union representation is not legally permissible given faculty roles