SSU student-employees seek stronger voice through unionizing

TITO FUENTES STAFF WRITER an Operational Staff Manager at the Recreation Center. She has been a student-employee for a year who enjoys working with her peers, building her community, and spending time with the “Rec Family.” Even though the employers are very respectful and understanding of classes, extracurricular activities, and emergencies, she would like to see a different pay schedule and more working hours.

The fight to protect student-employees is on and the road to a Student-Workers Union is breaking stride at Sonoma State. The California State University Employees Union (CSUEU), National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), and The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021 are all partnering up to help universities like Sonoma State and its student-employees by giving them more options and tools to protect, voice, and secure their work life.

CSUEU is a union that represents California State University students who are employed by their college or university. They help enable these students to advance common interests such as higher wages, applicable benefits, better scheduling, and improving general conditions in the workplace.

“I would work more since our current cap is 20 hours a week. Another downside is being paid monthly, it gets hard trying to budget out for a whole month when thinking about rent and groceries.” With a student-workers union, hour caps, paydays, and different scheduling can all be negotiated properly and with protection.

In order to form a union there are many steps to ensure it’s properly done.

NUHW Union Steward, Jeremiah Black,

As Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, was preparing Senate Bill 808, introduced Feb. 17, a scandal at Sonoma State was taken into consideration as well as many other mishandlings of sexual harassment allegations across the CSU system.

Senate Bill 808 is pushing for increased accountability and transparency of sexual harassment investigations. Making settlements public on CSU websites, having increased oversight, and prohibiting retreat rights are all goals the bill is looking to accomplish.

Sexual harassment investigations and settlements have been historically private, but Dodd’s spokesperson, Paul Payne, says the bill is trying to change that. “Schools would have to inform state lawmakers of exactly what happened. That way, there will be accountability and oversight,” said Payne. He also shared that the exact details were not concrete because the bill is still new, but reporting details of investigations and settlements to the legislature would be required.

Another level of transparency the bill is looking to achieve is the posting of settlements, length of investigations, and the number of complaints filed on a CSU’s website. The goal, Payne says, is to bring light to these cases to clean up the problems present on California campuses, “The exact details are still being decided but it will probably be on the school’s website.” If the bill passes, students can expect to see a lot more information about investigations.

Jennifer Bonifacio Rodriguez, a first year with an undeclared major, believes the see DODD on pg. 4

COURTESY// sd03.senate.ca.gov new bill will ensure that future sexual better attention.