Hi Antiwork, I’m a college student at a large public university in Colorado. I work as an Resident Advisor (RA), a student employee who receives a stipend (room and board covered) as payment for the community development and safety work we do.
I was recently made aware that RAs have been attempting to unionize, what with the conditions we have been subjected to in the past few years. While the university managed to get a clue last April and paid its residence life staff a $500 hazard bonus for the entire COVID year (2020-2021 school year), it was made clear to us that this was one-off (and, if I do say so myself, a little bit of too little, too late). The new union is trying to recruit, and while running a program yesterday we were approached by two union reps handing out brochures. My direct supervisor was there with us, and after we took the brochures, he gave us the lowdown:
The demands put forward by the union include many versions of pay increases, but most importantly they demand a pay raise for second and third-year returning RAs. It’s not much, something like $300 per semester for returners, compared to the ~$8000 room and board stipend’s value, and considering the university’s recent struggle to attract new RAs, seems reasonable enough. However, they are almost guaranteed to be unable to reach any sort of deal. Why? Because if any extra bonus was added to the RAs’ pay, our pay would then threaten the pay rate of the degree-holding specially trained “pro staff”. These are people like my Hall Director (secondary supervisor) who have to deal with insane shit like people breaking their ankles cartwheeling through the hallway, and then understandably not wanting an ambulance, but having no other means of transportation to receive very necessary care; and who are specially trained to respond to mental health crises.
All professional staff are paid hourly; the rate is something like 20/hr, which is already insultingly low. The RAs are paid 15/hr for any desk work, but if you do the math, we’re only allowed as students to work 20 hours per week: 8000 stipend per semester divided by 16 20-hour weeks is 25/hr. Ignoring the fact that we live where we work, which essentially invalidates the notion of a limited number of workable hours, we already make more proportionally than the pro staff. The only reason this works at all is because the pro staff are full-time and can clock 40+ hours per week plus overtime.
So yeah. No raises for underpaid campus workers, then we might have to raise the wage for our even MORE underpaid campus workers!
My supervisors are both very nice, passionate people (as you might expect from such a line of work) and have said that if we choose to unionize, they support it; but told us not to expect any of the union’s demands to be met. I asked why they don’t have a union then; neither of them have any idea. This is all so incredibly fucked.