Yet another labor movement is afoot at the nation’s largest public university system.
Student assistants at California State University, backed by the California State University Employees Union, will file petitions Monday to form what they say would be the largest union of undergraduate student workers in the country.
Many of the students say they’re financially independent and need higher wages, more hours, and paid time off for sickness and holidays to afford basic living expenses like rent and groceries.
Their unionization effort marks the latest labor action to rock California institutions of higher education in the last few months, following a six-week strike that halted learning and final exams at the University of California and a coordinated push for raises at CSU among support workers, researchers and faculty.
The California State University Employees Union has helped the students organize and gather more than 4,000 worker signatures starting last November. They’ll submit those union cards Monday morning to the Public Employment Relations Board to hopefully trigger a union vote.
“There are so many student workers who just don’t have the resources and support from the institution,” said Grayce Honsa, 21, a third-year political science and women’s studies major at San Diego State. “Yet, we are the people making that institution run on the day-to-day.”
At the heart of the unionization push appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what role a student job...
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