Jacobin Radio: Organizing Outside the Tenure Track

<p>Suzi speaks with Kate Levin, Janis Yue, and Sanjay Madhav, lead organizers of United Faculty-UAW, about their unionization drive at the University of Southern California (USC), one that would create the largest bargaining unit of non-tenure-track faculty at a private university in the US. Ballots go out April 24 and will be counted on May 18.</p>

<p>The organizers describe two years of faculty-driven organizing, built one conversation at a time. Currently 75% of USC faculty are non-tenure-track, with no job security, no say over working conditions, and no recourse against healthcare cuts or wage freezes — the result of 40 years of academic corporatization. Now they’re fighting back.</p>

<p>USC’s response? The administration has chosen to deploy the same constitutional wrecking-ball legal playbook pushed by SpaceX/Amazon, arguing that the NLRB itself is unconstitutional. No other university has taken such an extreme position.</p>

<p>This is more than a labor story; it’s an account of the assault on democratic institutions, the NLRB, worker rights, and higher education itself at a moment when universities are under attack from federal funding cuts and DEI rollbacks. USC’s non-tenure-track faculty are fighting not just for a contract but for the principle that workers can organize at all.</p>

<p>The organizers highlight the inspiration drawn from the successful NYU contract, and explain why winning this election in this political moment could change academic labor nationwide.</p>

<p><em>Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman</em> features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.</p>