Unionizing Work Study

Most Jobs on Todays Campuses are Limited to Work Study Students Only - Should Work Study Students Unionize and Organize for Higher Wages?  They are Paid Very Little

Unionizing Centralized Work-Study Programs on University Campuses

A number of campuses have recently within the past ten years of so, on the pretext of assigning jobs to the "most needy," instituted systems of centralizing all campus jobs and all campus job assignment through their centralized work study offices, and requiring that in order to work on campus at an on campus job, that the student be work-study eligible.

On the one hand, this is clearly violative of 14th amendment law, because it violates the right of an employer and employee to freely enter into a contract.  Even without substantive due process, there remains a liberty to enter into contract, and the right to enter into contracts freely continues to exist.  

On the other hand, and perhaps more significantly, the creation of such centralized labor pools as the "Centralized Work Study Student Labor Pool at Such and Such University" invites labor organization and the creation of a union.

Certainly graduate students have been organized and are now unionized at many universities now--including notably Yale and Temple Universities.

If work-study jobs are handed out to undergrads on a centralized basis, and the number of undergrads pooled together as a work-study class are as many as five to ten thousand, then the creation of a labor union consisting of work-study eligible workers--99% of whom perform the duties of, and supplant the work of, otherwise eligible full-time employees--are therefore class-certifiable to have union elections and be represented in collective bargaining.

There may be pre-emption issues qua work study and federal laws regarding financial aid, but a low paying job is no substitute for a grant, and if eligible to organize into a union, then certainly students so situated should do so, and labor organizers should assist them to do so.

In a way, this is just as bad as the noxious system of unpaid internships which has sprung up the past ten years around us.  

Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.