Elaine S. Povich | Stateline.org (TNS)
Junior psychology major Erin Green works part time at the children’s preschool at Sonoma State University, caring for university employees’ kids ages 1 to 5. Some of the non-student workers in her center belong to a union. But she didn’t, until just a few weeks ago.
Green, a 49-year-old returning student who works 20 hours a week, said she makes $16.25 an hour, just above the state’s minimum wage of $16.
“I was appalled at how little we were getting paid,” Green said. “When I started to hear the buzz around the campus that we were about to become unionized, I thought that was something I should get involved in.”
Green and more than 7,000 undergraduate student workers across California State University’s 23 campuses overwhelmingly voted in an election this year to join a union. Now, about 20,000 undergrads are members of the California State University Employees Union, the largest union of undergraduate student workers in the country.
Green is at the tip of the growing movement toward undergraduate unionization on state college campuses. University of Oregon undergraduates voted in October to form a union covering about 4,000 students, one of the nation’s first such unions at a public university.
While graduate students and teaching assistants have been organizing since before the pandemic, large-scale undergraduate unions at public schools are new, joining recent moves by their counterparts at a number of private schools. Students, who often work next to unionized full-time employees, are looking for better pay, more predictable hours and benefits such as holiday and sick pay.
The student movements come as labor unions are seeing a resurgence nationwide. Since 2021, workers at hundreds of Starbucks stores have voted to organize, and Volkswagen workers at a Tennessee plant voted in April to join the United Auto Workers.
At Cal State, the union — which represents lab assistants, residence hall workers, cafeteria…
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