California State University undergraduate assistants push to unionize

By RIA ROEBUCK JOSEPH THE CENTER SQUARE CONTRIBUTOR

(The Center Square) — Student assistants from 23 California State University campuses announced on Monday their intention to unionize. They were joined by leaders of the California Faculty Association and CSU Employees Union (SEIU 2579) on a Zoom press conference.

The process started last year, according to Catherine Hutchinson, president Chapter 324, Channel Islands, when CSUEU were in contract negotiations and the students were hearing the process of ongoing negotiations.

“My student assistants in particular were hearing what was happening with this issue at the table and then also starting to learn about the union and what that meant and they started talking… it was not just one campus … and they were actually trying to form their own little network and I, being president of CSUEU, said ‘Hey let’s have that conversation you guys are really interested in how does a union work, how would it benefit you and how do you form one enjoinment’ so it was a process that started out last year with our bargaining. They were looking and seeing what we were fighting for in our own contract and then they wanted to know how that could apply to them,” she said.

Undergraduate student assistants, with the help of Ms. Hutchinson, then organized to push a campaign to form a union, calling for more working hours, higher wages and work benefits such as paid sick leave. The undergraduate students are hoping for better working conditions and wages that allow them to support themselves and their educational goals and believe a union is the best avenue to achieve this end.

“We expect the CSU to use a slow process of bureaucracy to stall, delay an election, which is what the students are wanting. We don’t want to forget the big picture. Today 10,000 student workers at the CSU are demanding to have their voices heard and to vote to form a union….hopefully by fall we have something for the students to be proud of,” Ms. Hutchinson said.

Cameron, a CSU student assistant, commented, “I really want to ask anybody at the top of the CSU, why do you expect students to perform well in school and perform well at work for little to no compensation? ..Why do you expect us to have this whole balancing act of being a good student and being a good worker with no compensation…why do you feel you have the right to kind of low-ball us like that when we are doing everything we can to lift you up?”

CSU has shied away from hiring union employees, opting instead to hire more and more student assistants to keep wages low for everyone and reduce the budget on worker wages and benefits.

As a first step towards unionization, student assistants submitted more than 4,000 signed union authorization cards when they filed a request for a union election with California’s Public Employment Relations Board.

The CSU campuses include Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo.