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We've been administering our Student Hardship Fund for one week. As of noon today, we've received 74 applications from UH grads and undergrads. We've learned a lot. We're mad. Here's a thread. 🔥 #EAluKākou
academiclaborunited.org/hardship

Student workers are facing layoffs and loss of wages at alarming rates. Roughly 60% of applicants to our hardship fund report losing some or all of their employment. Off-campus industries such as food service, hospitality, retail, and other “non-essential” jobs are shutting down.

While this is challenging, what is most infuriating to us is that many students are also reporting loss of employment in on-campus student worker positions across a wide array of offices and departments, including Kennedy Theatre, UH Athletic Services, and at the CCs.

UH admin has issued a Work from Home order that states ALL employees CAN work from home, but they have not issued an order guaranteeing continued employment or maintenance of hours for hourly employees and GAs, or put in place any oversight that this policy is followed.

The result is that it is up to supervisors to find remote work for student employees, and rather than do that, many are SIMPLY LAYING THEM OFF.

At UH, money for student employee wages is allocated in annual budgets. It is unacceptable that student workers are being laid off during a time of crisis when they need financial stability most, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS INCONVENIENT for supervisors to transfer them to remote work.

When ALU EC and over 350 UH and community supporters submitted our petition to UH administration on March 10th, we demanded that UH guarantee continued employment and wages of GAs whose jobs could only be performed on campus. Admin did not make this guarantee.

Instead, they ignored the precarity of student workers. Now we are seeing layoffs of student workers from grads to undergrads. Admin is doing nothing about it. They have begun asking the community for donations for an Urgent Student Relief Fund.

ALU is a completely volunteer-run grassroots org with an annual operating budget of $0; UH has millions of dollars and they are only just now taking the same measures we began over a week ago? Why is UH not bankrolling this effort itself? Students need relief NOW!

It is utterly shameful that UH admin will unnecessarily place their workers in positions of hardship by laying them off, and then play themselves as heroes with a community-bankrolled urgent relief fund rather than just pay their workers' wages in the first place!

Right now, student parents are struggling to meet higher childcare costs due to school shutdowns and lack of access to supplies (about 10% of applications). Their ability to work is compromised by the time and energy they now must commit to full-time childcare.

Spouses and parents are also losing employment, compounding the financial burden to provide for their families. Students who are caregivers to elderly relatives are struggling to afford necessities. About 10% of our applicants cannot meet essential healthcare needs.

Many students were already living paycheck-to-paycheck, variously working multiple jobs, struggling to afford high cost-of-living, provide for their families, and pay exorbitant medical bills on their below-living-wages even before these layoffs and loss of hours.

Their ability to save money for times of hardship has been minimal at best. Loss of employment for even a few weeks means that they and their families are now facing intense financial hardship.

We want to be clear: there is no meaningful difference between the ways graduate and undergraduate students are feeling the intense effects of our exploited labor in this moment of crisis. We are all working WITHOUT THE PROTECTIONS OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS.

With unions, we would have the ability to bargain for sick leave, job security, hazard pay, and other protections that would have ensured our ability to take care ourselves and loved ones throughout this crisis. We need unions! We need to protect each other, now more than ever.