Full-time research, teaching, practitioner and clinical-track faculty at Gould School of Law released a public statement Friday opposing their inclusion in the proposed University-wide RTPC faculty union and asked to be excluded from it. 

Full-time Gould RTPC faculty stated that the proposed union “is inappropriate for law faculty in general and Gould law faculty in particular,” and that they would be harmed by the union if they were to join. 

“We support people who want to be members of a union. We just don’t want to be part of the union, and we don’t think it should be a University-wide union,” said Niels Frenzen, a clinical professor of law and a full-time RTPC faculty member, in an interview with the Daily Trojan on Monday.

The Gould website lists 10 faculty members with the title of clinical professor, professor of the practice of law or lawyering skills professors, which the letter lists as the group of full-time RTPC faculty at Gould. 

Frenzen said that Gould full-time RTPC faculty were not consulted by union organizers, but that faculty did decline to sign documents supporting the union during UF-UAW’s 15-month organizing effort, which began in December 2024.

The full-time Gould RTPC faculty statement outlines seven reasons why they would not like to be included and how they say the United Faculty-UAW union may harm them. 

These reasons include the American Bar Association’s protections for clinical and non-tenured law faculty exceeding those available to full-time RTPC faculty. They said they would also lose participation in the merit review process for faculty. Additionally, they wrote that they want to preserve the ability to negotiate individually with law school administration. 

They also stated that a previous University-wide initiative to improve the conditions of RTPC faculty harmed full-time Gould faculty while faculty at other schools benefited. They wrote that the prior initiative to give RTPC faculty five-year contracts overrode a Gould policy that gave RTPC faculty rolling three-year contracts without an end-of-contract review.

“We oppose being included in a collective bargaining unit with such disparate interests,” the full-time Gould RTPC faculty wrote. “For all of these reasons, we urge the union and the University to exclude Gould full-time RTPC faculty from the bargaining unit.”

Full-time Gould RTPC faculty made a joint agreement to put out a statement after it was announced that a vote for the union would take place and there was a good chance that it would receive sufficient votes to pass, Frenzen said.

The organizing effort of RTPC faculty was approved by the National Labor Relations Board in March, the election dates were announced last week and all eligible RTPC faculty will be allowed to vote in the election from April 24 through May 15.

Lizzy Liautaud and Zachary Whalen contributed to this report.

Clarification: This article and its headline were updated April 22 at 12:00 a.m. to specify that the Gould RTPC faculty who released the public statement are full-time, including clinical professors, professors of the practice of law and lawyering skills professors. It was also updated with the correct definition of RTPC and to clarify that not all RTPC faculty would be represented by the union, which excludes School of Cinematic Arts adjuncts, Keck School of Medicine faculty and faculty employed by the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.