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  • Cal State student assistants and workers vote to unionize

    Cal State student assistants and workers vote to unionize


    Sacramento State student assistants and employees celebrate the official vote for the undergraduate student assistants to unionize.

    Ashley A. Smith/EdSource

    This story was updated at 1:10 p.m. Friday to include more comments from student workers and CSU chancellor’s office..

    Student assistants and workers in the California State University system announced Friday that they had voted in favor of unionizing.

    The students across the 23 campuses voted in favor of organizing one of the largest student worker organizations in the country so they could fight for better pay, working conditions, sick and paid leave, and more work hours.

    The students overwhelmingly voted 7,050 to 202 in favor of joining the CSU Employees Union (CSUEU).

    “This is for all of us and for all of our futures,” said Cameron Macedonio, a student assistant at CSU Fullerton. “Student assistants were increasingly fed up with the CSU administration’s treatment of us. They undervalue us. On one hand, they act as if we’re dispensable, but on the other hand, they expect us to do the work of full-time staff but for minimum wages and no benefits.”

    Student assistants often work for minimum wage, are limited to 20 hours or less a week, and don’t receive sick or paid leave.

    Danny Avitia, a senior majoring in sociology and leadership development at San Diego State, said he’s found it difficult to survive on $16.50 an hour while working in the campus Office of Employee Engagement. He assists the director of that office with organizing events, newsletters, graphics, media and communications.

    Avitia said he’s had to take on two more jobs and whenever he’s gotten sick, he “shows up to work and gets everyone sick” because he doesn’t receive any leave or paid time off.

    Unionizing “means better access to discounts like parking and transit,” he said. “It means that I can fight for a better living wage because, again, meeting the basic needs of people is simply not enough here in California anymore.”

    Now, they will need to decide what they want to bargain for, assemble a negotiating team and leadership, and present their demands to the Cal State administration. As part of the CSUEU, they’ll have assistance from that organization and the Service Employees International Union or SEIU.

    “With 20,000 student assistants joining CSUEU’s 16,000 CSU staff members, university management will no longer be able to divide students and staff or exploit student labor to degrade staff jobs,” said Catherine Hutchinson, president of CSUEU. “Joining together is a win for students, for staff, and for all Californians who have a stake in the CSU’s mission.”

    Many of the student assistants feel unionizing was just one step in a long process to better pay and working conditions. They all recently watched the California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 professors and, lecturers go on strike twice for a better contact.

    “There will be some struggles that will come with it,” said Alejandro Carrillo, an international business junior at San Diego State. “We just had the CFA strike and saw how hard it was for them to fight and the struggles that came with it. I’m not expecting anything less than that for student workers.”

    In the meantime, the chancellor’s office said it would maintain the current standards and requirements for student assistants.

    “The CSU has a long history of providing on-campus jobs to students through student assistant positions, which give our students the opportunity to gain valuable work experience while they pursue their degrees,” said Leora Freedman, CSU’s vice chancellor for human resources. “The CSU respects the decision of student assistants to form a union and looks forward to bargaining in good faith with the newly formed CSUEU student assistant unit.”

    California Student Journalism Corps member Jazlyn Dieguez, a fourth-year journalism student at San Diego State University, contributed to this story.





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  • Trump Will Cut More Federal Workers Next Year

    Trump Will Cut More Federal Workers Next Year


    Since his second inauguration, Trump has fired tens of thousands of federal workers, based on snap recommendations by Elon Musk’s team of whippersnappers. They have gone into government departments and agencies and decided in a day or so which workers to fire and which contracts to terminate. They don’t have enough information or time to make considered judgments, so they treat every federal worker as dispensable. The numbers fired are hard to determine, because federal judges have repeatedly reversed their actions. Some have been approved by the courts. The outcome is still in flux, though we do know that little is left of USAID or the U.S. Departnent of Education.

    Government Executive reports that Trump plans a new round of layoffs in his second year. It’s unclear what his end goal is: is he destroying the federal government for some reason? With all the laid-off workers, he hasn’t reduced the budget. It’s grown, due to greater expenses for ICE, border security, and defense.

    Some agencies, like FEMA and the National Weather Service, are being stripped to the bone. What will remain of our government at the end of his term?

    Government Executive reports:

    The Trump administration is looking to slash a net of 107,000 employees at non-defense agencies next fiscal year, which would lead to an overall reduction of more than 7% of those workers. 

    Agencies laid out their workforce reductions in an expanded version of President Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget released on Friday, which includes both ideas they can implement unilaterally and proposals that will require congressional approval. If agencies follow through on their plans, the cuts will likely be even steeper, as the Defense Department and some other agencies did not include their announced cuts in the new budget documents. 

    The cuts represent changes projected to take effect next year relative to fiscal 2025 staffing levels. The ongoing cuts that have already occurred were generally not factored into the current workforce counts and the White House noted those figures “may not reflect all of the management and administrative actions underway or planned in federal agencies.” 

    Agencies are currently operating under a directive from Trump to slash their rolls, though those plans are largely paused under court order and awaiting resolution at the Supreme Court. 

    Under the budget forecasts, the Education Department will shed the most employees, followed by the Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration and NASA. Education has already moved to lay off one-third of its workforce, but those reductions in force are currently paused by a separate court order. 

    The departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development and Agriculture are also expecting to cut more than 20% of their workforces. 

    The Trump administration will seek to eliminate more than 107,000 jobs across government, but the net impact is mitigated by targeted hiring at certain agencies and offices. The Transportation Department is the only agency to project an overall staffing increase, driven by hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration and for IT. The Homeland Security Department will seek to significantly staff up at Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the administration ramps up its border crackdown and deportation operations, though DHS will see an overall cut due to planned reductions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency—which is set to shed 13% of its workforce—and the Transportation Security Administration—which will cut around 6%. 

    Many offices will be cut nearly entirely, such as the research and state forestry offices within USDA’s Forest Service. The department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service would shed nearly 4,000 employees, including two-thirds of employees providing technical assistance on conservation planning and forecasting on snowpack and water supply.  

    HHS, which has already laid off 10,000 employees, would eliminate 10 offices entirely, though some of the impacted employees are being absorbed into the new Administration for Health America or other reorganized areas. NASA is planning to shutter its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Engagement office and would cut its Science office in half. DHS would eliminate its Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office. Cuts at the Treasury Department would be driven by reductions at the Internal Revenue Service— which would zero out its Business Systems Modernization office—though the Bureau of Fiscal Service is also planning to slash one-quarter of its staff.

    At the Interior Department, the National Park Service is planning to cut about 27% of its employees, Fish and Wildlife Service would cut 19% and U.S. Geological Survey would cut 32%.  

    The full scope of the cuts across government will likely expand over time: The Veterans Affairs Department is set to shed more than 80,000 employees and layoffs—assuming a court injunction is lifted—are expected as soon as this month, though they are not a part of the budget. The Defense Department has said it will cut around 60,000 civilian employees, but it has yet to detail those plans in Trump’s budget. 



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