The California State University student assistant union is still fighting for a contract with CSU management after voting to unionize in February.
The union was created for student assistants working at CSU colleges to give them more benefits, according to the California State University Employees Union website.
These benefits include things such as sick pay, parking benefits and higher pay, according to the same website.
The student assistant union joined the California State University Employees Union, making them the largest undergraduate student worker union in the U.S., according to the union’s website.
Akhil Rao, a junior business major and student organizer for the student assistant union, started working as a student assistant over the summer.
Rao said student assistants play a role in helping campuses run, doing various jobs such as assisting professors, scheduling appointments, or answering phone calls.
“The pay I was getting — as well as the amount of work I was doing —I just thought it was a little unfair,” Rao said. “I also saw some of my co-workers get their hours cut, so I saw an opportunity to fight for ourselves.”
As a student organizer, Rao’s job is to strengthen the union by assembling students on campus to get more union memberships.
“I saw an opportunity to fight for ourselves, like (to) kind of have more of a voice for ourselves,” Rao said. “I thought (it) would be something great that we could do for… all students across California.”
Kaily Brooks, a student assistant at San Diego State University and a part of the student bargaining team said negotiating with the CSU has been difficult.
“(Representatives of the CSU) have not brought serious proposals to the bargaining table,” Brooks said. “They have repeatedly told us that student assistant jobs are disposable, that our jobs are unimportant (and) that they are not crucial to running campuses.”
The union has been engaging in negotiations with CSU management since the summer, after the union was created in February.
“They think of us as temporary workers because we’re going to graduate in four years,” Brooks said. “But four years is not necessarily a short period of time, especially if you have someone that’s working in the same department.”
CSU media relations refused any interviews involving discussions about bargaining with the Student Assistant Union.
The CSU’s statement on its website is that it respects the decision to unionize and looks forward to the bargaining process.
There are 20,000 student assistants working as part of CSU campuses across the state according to the CSU website.
“If we were to just snap our fingers and suddenly there would be no student assistants, our campuses would crumble,” Brooks said.
Catherine Hutchinson, California State University Employees Union president, manages organizing, finances, and representation.
“As a former student assistant, I knew how it was,” Hutchinson said. “We didn’t really have any say or rights to our schedule… or if we missed work we didn’t get paid because we didn’t have sick leave and everything.”
Hutchinson said the union had to be formed because the lack of benefits and wage rate didn’t sit right with her.
“I was seeing that the CSU was hiring more students than staff to backfill the position when a staff member either retired or left,” Hutchinson said. “They actually were hiring more students at a lower, cheaper rate because they don’t pay benefits and things like that.”
The current minimum wage for CSU student assistants is $16 per hour, and a maximum of $21.42 per hour, according to a CSU salary document.
“It could have been drug out, but the CSU actually worked with us in a sense of that,” Hutchinson said. “They didn’t put up too many roadblocks as an employer to keep us from unionizing the student workers.”
Khanh Weinberg, California State University Employee Union communications officer, also weighed in about what she thought of the students organizing.
“This generation of workers see that this current economic system just doesn’t work,” Weinberg said. “They are coming together, feeling empowered… and really growing a genuine movement where workers have a voice at the table to improve their lives.”
