Some University of Southern California faculty vote to unionize
By Sharon Bernstein
(Reuters) - About 100 part-time and contract faculty at the University of Southern California voted to become the latest non-tenured U.S. professors to unionize, amid complaints of low pay and poor job security, but 300 others did not, a union said on Tuesday.
About 100 instructors at two divisions of the school, focused on the arts and international students, voted to affiliate with the Service Employees International Union, spokesman Mike Long said.
They join non-tenured colleagues at numerous U.S. universities who have organized, including the University of Chicago, Boston University, Loyola University Chicago, Georgetown and Tufts University.
"What we're fighting for is not just better wages and decent living conditions, but also for the possibility of greater participation in the life of the school," said Noura Wedell, who teaches critical studies in the Los Angeles-based university's Roski School of Art and Design.
But another group of about 300 professors at the university's larger Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, declined to join the union in a close vote, Long said.
Provost Michael Quick, who opposed the unionization effort, said the university offers higher salaries than the union has negotiated elsewhere, and offers benefits to half-time workers. It has also improved job security, by offering multi-year contracts to those who are not on track for tenure, he said.
"The vote in Roski is personally disappointing to me, though I hear the message you have sent," Quick said in a statement, adding that he "did not take lightly" the fact that the Dornsife vote was close.
Like many private universities struggling as their endowments took a hit during the financial crisis, USC has relied more on part-time and contract faculty, and less on the relatively better paid professors who are on track to achieve full tenure, or lifetime employment.
USC is the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles, with 6,624 faculty members and a total of about 25,000 jobs. About 1,180 faculty have the lifetime protections of tenure, while another 315 are on track to receive the benefit, university data shows.
But whereas star tenured professors can pull down six-figure salaries, adjunct lecturers at USC make between $3,840 and $10,000 per course they teach, according to the Adjunct Project, which tracks work issues for non-tenured professors.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Clarence Fernandez)
