Classified employees are sick and tired of being overworked and underpaid. Does that matter to us as students?
First, let’s explain that classified employees are basically the workhorse of any school. They are the secretaries, the maintenance workers and the people who process the many financial aid applications every semester. So yes, these employees are very important. Without them, the campus gets dirty, all of the countless items around campus stay broken, there is nobody to answer the phones and nobody to process our FAFSA applications.
On Jan. 21, about 20 classified employees and their supporters walked around the grass in front of the library chanting about equal pay and getting a raise. They weren’t a big group, but they made up for that with their volume. Some of them stopped students and gathered signatures for their petition to help get their raises.
They had a table set up in the middle of the grass with information and wore small items to help support them. It was nice to see people stopping and supporting them by signing their petition and even one of our own vice presidents, Zav Dadabhoy, stopped at the table and showed his support.
Students were stopped and told about the petition, most signed and some just walked away.
A classified employee operates most, if not all of the services BC provides. Those services are important to us and a lot of us rely on those services to help us be successful in our classes.
On the BC website, it has a whole page talking about their vision, values and mission. These cannot be achieved without the cooperation of the classified employees. If they aren’t happy, morale drops and if the morale drops then their work starts to get compromised. If their work gets compromised, then the people who have the most to lose in this situation are the students.
We already saw a delay in the processing of FAFSA applications last semester. What’s next?
If we can find $50,000 dollars in our budget to pay a high-dollar lawyer to fight the football sanctions, then a raise for these employees can be worked into the budget, also.
According to their petition, they want a three percent raise and we tried to get specifics on how much of an increase in dollars that was but we were unsuccessful in getting that information. Three percent doesn’t sound like a lot of money compared to the work these employees have to do. They are the grease that keeps the gears moving for everything at BC. Heck, they are even the gears, too.
They deserve every penny they are asking for because they do all of the heavy lifting so that the people who pay their salaries can do their jobs. These employees need to keep fighting for their raises and hopefully BC will be smart enough to listen.
The very least the administration can do is have a straightforward meeting with them to try to resolve this matter as soon as possible, if not for the employees, then for what’s best for the students.