Cal State student workers vote to form largest undergraduate union
This is a cross-published story with Mustang News, more information can be found here
Over twenty thousand Cal State student employees received an e-ballot in late January to participate in the Student Employee Sector of the California State University Employees Union.
On Feb. 23, the vote passed with over seven thousand student assistant across the 23 CSU campuses voting online.
97% of students voted yes forming the largest undergraduate union in the country. Political science senior Jeremy Banks, is the organizing committee intern at the Mustang Success Center.
“Obviously our number one jobs while attending university should be to learn and to actually get as much out as we can from our degrees,” Banks said. “It’s really difficult to do that when we have to work multiple jobs to just get the bare minimum in terms of money and benefits from other outside work.”
Banks joined the campaign in June and has noticed a lot of support when doing outreach work.
“Some students have fears regarding what a union means in terms of their personal negotiation, benefits and things like that,” Banks said. “Overall, we’ve heard overwhelmingly positive things. Most students are very supportive of forming the union.”
The union’s main goal is to get higher pay, parking benefits and paid sick time, according to their website.
Sociology sophomore Adrianna Colón is a peer leader for the Center for Leadership at Cal Poly. She is curious to see what happens now that the union has officially been approved.
“There’s strength in numbers, but there’s also so many people that we’re going to have to accommodate for, so I’m interested how that pans out,” Colón said.
Student workers will now solidify what they want to win in their first contract and begin selecting their bargaining team.
They hope to come to terms with CSU on these issues to avoid going on strike.
“Banding together that many people from all the CSU’s is huge,” Colón said. “That shows volume about what the students care about and how student assistants expect to be treated and the benefits that we get from working on campus.”
