Change in Bargaining Law for Student Employees

Governor Brown signed a bill Oct. 15 - SB 201 - amending HEERA, the legislation regulating collective bargaining at UC, to widen unionization of student employees. (Yours truly missed this one, but here it is now.)

SB 201, Skinner. Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act: employees.

(1) Existing law, known as the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act, contains provisions relating to employer-employee relations between the state and the employees of state institutions of higher education, including the University of California and the California State University, as well as the Hastings College of the Law. These provisions assign major responsibilities for implementation to the Public Employment Relations Board.

Under the act, an “employee” or “higher education employee” is defined as any employee of the Regents of the University of California, the Directors of the Hastings College of the Law, or the Trustees of the California State University. The act authorizes the board to find student employees whose employment is contingent on their status as students are employees only if the services they provide are unrelated to their educational objectives, or that those educational objectives are subordinate to the services they perform and that coverage under this act would further the purposes of the act.

This bill would make student employees, whose employment is contingent upon their status as students, “employees” and “higher education employees” for purposes of the act.

(2) The act grants employees the right to form, join, and participate in the activities of employee organizations of their own choosing for the purpose of representation on all matters of employer-employee relations and for the purpose of meeting and conferring with their employer. Under the act, all matters not within the scope of representation are reserved to the employer and are not subject to meeting and conferring. The act excludes from the scope of representation, for purposes of the University of California only, among other things, conditions for the award of certificates and degrees to students.

This bill would specify that, for purposes of the University of California only, the requirements for students to achieve satisfactory progress toward their degrees are also outside of the scope of representation.

Full text of law at:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB201