About 20,000 student assistants at all 23 California State University (CSU) campuses are coming together in a historic vote that would create the largest undergraduate student worker union in U.S. history. The vote started on Jan. 25 and is running until Feb. 22.
The motion would have student assistants join the CSU Employees Union (CSUEU) which represents 16,000 CSU support staff. If student assistants were to join the union, opportunities would open for the student workforce to negotiate for better pay, sick leave, reduced parking rates and better hours with the CSU.
Student assistants who worked from May to December in 2023 are eligible to vote. They will have already received an email from the American Arbitration Association to their student emails, with all the information needed to cast a vote.
“The CSU needs to recognize that student assistants are an essential part of how they run their campuses and that the work we’re doing is really important to keeping a campus going,” said Leah Baker, a recent computer science graduate from California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB).
When Baker began working with technical support services in the IT department in January 2022, she was being paid $15.50 an hour. Even though she was being paid 50 cents more than state minimum wage at the time, her quickly escalating job duties outmatched her paycheck. In August 2023, she transferred to the network services branch of IT, which handles internet maintenance on campus. By the time she graduated, Baker was being paid $16.50 an hour and “scraping by” on her student assistant income.
“Student assistants play a vital role on campus and in the [Otter Cross Cultural Center] (OC3),” said OC3 Director Rudy Medina. “Our university would not be able to function without student assistants … however, students are now more than ever struggling to meet their basic needs.”
Because the CSU is a state entity, it is subject to state minimum wage laws, not county laws. In Monterey County, the minimum wage is the same as the state, at $15.50 an hour. CSU students are also not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week during an academic session.
“The Student Assistants’ primary role is that of a student and not a traditional employee,” according to Timothy Yeung, a lawyer for the CSU who wrote to the administrative judge overseeing the student assistants’ case.
Yeung’s statement, however, contradicts Baker’s lived experience as a student worker at CSUMB.
“I had to ask for 25 cent raises every semester, and for the job I was doing, it was not even close to the market rate,” she said. The average hourly rate for a starting IT technician in Monterey County is about $25 an hour, according to the Monterey County Human Resources Services.
“Over this last summer, a lot of the computers on campus got replaced and we upgraded the computers to Windows 11. I did a lot of the footwork for that. I replaced almost every computer in the library by myself.”
Baker continued, “I was doing work that unionized staff were doing (only) for much, much less. And we’re seeing that more and more across the campuses.”
“Student Assistants are voting to build their union so that they can have a voice at work, for better pay and working conditions,” said Khanh Weinberg, communications officer for the CSUEU. “[Students] want to hold CSU management accountable to the CSU mission, which is advancing equity and opportunities for students to have a good future.”
The CSUEU’s monthly membership dues are 1.2% of an employee’s gross salary and are automatically taken from the employee’s paycheck. Weinberg says student assistants would not be required to pay this fee until their first contract is won.
Despite the CSU’s stance that student assistant work is fundamentally different from that of traditional employees, “the California State University respects the rights of workers to unionize,” said Hazel Kelly, a CSU spokesperson in an emailed statement. “Should student assistants elect to unionize, the CSU looks forward to engaging with them as we do with our other union partners.”
The union vote comes at a time of unrest in the CSU, following the week-long CFA strike that was cut short after a tentative agreement was reached on day one of the strike.
“Almost every sector of the CSU’s workforce is not happy with them,” said Baker. “The professors aren’t happy. The Teamsters aren’t happy. The students aren’t happy. Something is fundamentally wrong with how [the CSU] is treating their workers if every section of their workers is going on strike or unionizing.”