Why We Formed a Union
Get to know who we are and why Student Services and Advising Professionals at the UC came together to form a union below. Click on the slideshow below to see our opening presentation for bargaining. Scroll down to see individual testimonies from your fellow SSAPs across all campuses.
Daisy ruiz
Riverside
As a student affairs professional that has worked at two different UC’s, I want to be able to protect the things I enjoy within the UC system and be part of the change. My first role at a UC was a contract position where every year, I was unsure as to whether or not I would have a job or, more importantly, health care coverage. While I advocated for myself, there was only so much I could do, which ultimately led to me seeking other career opportunities. In addition, I am exhausted from feeling burnt out and seeing colleagues in the same boat trying to stay afloat with limited support. While I am now in a career position, I look forward to being a part of all the positive change a union can make.”
Nandini Inmula
Los Angeles
Staff provide critical support to all community members across our many campuses and yet, we are consistently the last to be considered when the UC sets their priorities. Working with students is more than just a career for me — it’s a passion. That passion should not come at the expense of being able to afford the rising cost of living, having a say in working conditions, or having opportunities to grow professionally. With a union, I am excited to have a collective voice and tell the UC what we are worth. It’s not just about me being happy in my role; it’s about all of us having a fair minimum standard and ensuring that those who come after us have that too. We are stronger together!
Nathaniel Ilo
Santa Barbara
Forming a union at UC would empower employees like me to collectively negotiate for better wages, benefits, and working conditions, job security and fair treatment for all staff. A union would provide support in addressing grievances and promote a safer work environment, fostering a sense of community and solidarity among colleagues. Additionally, we could advocate for equitable compensation, access to healthcare, and professional development opportunities, enhancing our overall welfare as employees.
Olivier Jamois
San Diego
San Diego is my hometown. UC San Diego is my alma mater. But with the UC’s paycheck, I can’t stay in this place that I love and achieve my goals. I want to be able to support a family, have a place I can call my own, and continue doing this job that I love. Without a fair contract, simple goals like these will remain dreams.
Trisha Tran
Los Angeles
Before working here at UCLA, I was dealing with chronic severe eczema, to the point where I could not get out of bed because every miniscule movement felt like a rug burn. My health insurance at the time would not pay for what I needed until I “proved” that multiple alternatives wouldn’t work. At a certain point, I was so desperate for some type of special medical treatment that I volunteered to be a clinical trial patient for a new drug that was getting tested for efficacy. When I started working at UCLA in 2022, I was finally able to explore better eczema treatments without my insurance denying it for the cost. After two years, I finally had a breakthrough and discovered some of my biggest triggers. However, my health journey is not over. I am still working with medical care providers to learn what I can do to keep improving my condition, and I still occasionally need to take two sick days from work about every 3 – 4 weeks if I have unexpected flare-ups and severe allergic reactions. Despite these hardships, I’m lucky to have managers that are flexible with my work hours when I need it. I cannot imagine being where I am now if it had not been for the medical coverage I received from this job and the amazing, supportive team that I have the pleasure of working with every day. All of us need affordable healthcare and equitable working conditions to thrive in our jobs. With so much uncertainty happening politically nowadays, it’s especially important for us to advocate for basic needs through a strong collective voice!
Haley Ruiz
Irvine
I’m passionate about mentoring students and helping them build futures they’re proud of. But my salary doesn’t cover rent, groceries, or my chronic health needs, and rising costs make basic care out of reach. Loving my job shouldn’t mean struggling to survive. A union would mean finally being able to advocate for fair compensation and a supportive, equitable environment for us all. This isn’t just about a paycheck; it’s about being able to live and work with dignity.
Mona Wang
San Diego
I am a Program Coordinator/Academic Advisor in the Data Science department at UC San Diego. I am responsible for advising over 1,000 undergraduate students as well as coordinating all aspects of the undergraduate program. However, despite the value I contribute to the department and university, I am often not recognized for these efforts and instead told to “do more with less.” I struggle with covering costs of living in the most expensive city in the country and am met with zero results after advocating for equity increases for the last two years. The worst part is – I know that I’m not alone in my experiences, which is why I support forming a union so student services professionals have a greater collective voice over our working conditions.
Laura Spautz
Berkeley
Advisors play an absolutely essential role at the University of California on many levels. As the front-line support system for students, we do the minute-by-minute emotional work of the University. Many advisors have master’s degrees in counseling and other professional fields and many years of experience in the field. In addition, we manage, coordinate and support complex departmental course programs, events, and processes. But our work is undervalued and underpaid. In fact, UC advisors frequently make less than half the salary of many managers, analysts, and workers in other professional titles. I have worked at UC for 26 years and have a graduate degree from UC Berkeley. My annual take-home pay is $42,000, which means I cannot afford the median rent on a one-bedroom apartment in the Bay Area. This is unfair and untenable, and this is why UC advisors need a union.
Jorge Padilla
Irvine
Speaking from my own experience, I am tired of having managers ask me to come to them directly to resolve issues with my labor or the conditions in which I work. This practice is not new and continues to support the imbalance of power between managers and Student Support Professionals in the UC system. It is time to seek fair representation, to come together as a collective and support each other by forming a union.
Diana Hernandez Garcia
Merced
I have the priviledge of working with a great division and serve amazing students at UC Merced. However, when issues come up, I often hear “talk to your supervisor”, even though most of the biggest issues in my workplace are not in my supervisor’s power to change. For example, we’ve heard leadership wants to limit hybrid/remote work modality. I know my coworkers across the UC are facing similar issues, so I know that the effort to form a union will help not only me, but also so many of my coworkers across the UC. Currently, the university is set up so that staff don’t have a strong say in the decisions made by the administration. Forming a union will give us the power to negotiate as equals with the UC.
Sean Campbell
Los Angeles
I’ve been seeing the difference unions can make all my life. My mother was a union representative for LAUSD before she retired, and I watched her for decades successfully fight for better working conditions for her fellow teachers and the students they serve. Student Service Professionals do so much to keep the University of California running, yet we have almost no voice in decisions that are made or power over our working conditions. Our pay is low, our burnout is high, and it’s time that we come together to advocate for ourselves. Unions work, and I’m excited to be part of this movement—change is possible!
Chanyce Rose
Santa Barbara
As an Admissions Counselor at UCSB, it is my job to be the “face” of the university to prospective students and their families. I help “sell” UCSB and convince parents why their student should come to our institution. What I leave out of the conversation is how half of my income goes toward my rent every month; that I’ve been looking for part time jobs to support myself despite working 40 hours per week (and sometimes more!) and how I know many other professionals in the same boat as me. Unionizing is the path toward livable wages that can keep up with the cost of living (especially in Santa Barbara), equitable access to career progression and gaining the working conditions that we deserve.
Cheryl Purifoy
Davis
In my 22 years as a Student Services Professional at UC Davis, I have seen poor leadership and abuses of power negatively impact the entire organization. Although many staff members reported consistent bullying, retaliation, and inequity to HR over a period of four years, issues were not adequately addressed for far too long. During this time, we lost close to 35 percent of the staff across 9 units. Without a union, we have had no effective way to hold leadership accountable for poor behavior. I strongly believe that having a union would have prevented these issues from happening, ensuring a fair compensation system that values all staff’s efforts equitably, along with an effective mechanism to address problematic behavior. It’s essential for both staff and leadership to come together to establish fair policies and procedures that would make everyone feel heard and valued. By joining together as a union, we gain greater power to make that change.
Cassie Isaacson
Santa Cruz
UC advisors & student services professionals are front and center to the work that the UC does, and yet most of us aren’t paid enough to afford housing near our campuses. We’re exhausted by long commutes, buried under untenable workloads, and burned out with upper administration doing the bare minimum to support us. Not surprisingly, turnover is high and morale is often low. It’s long past time for change, and I’m excited to be a part of this effort to start a new and better chapter for us!
Lydia Erickson
San Francisco
I am the Clinical Careers Program Manager and Trainer at the Office of Career and Professional Development at UCSF. Given increasingly high costs of living and inflation, I support the unionization effort because I believe that in order to fulfill our mission of service to our students and communities, we first need to ensure that our working conditions and compensation are sustainable. In an expensive place like the Bay Area, it would be especially helpful to have a clear and predictable salary schedule that reflects the cost of living, like many of the local community colleges do. All workers deserve salaries that are sufficient to support themselves and their families, and I believe that the best way to achieve this goal is through unionization. As the saying goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”
Arman Liwanag
Berkeley
I believe in People Power to make equitable, transformative, and sustainable change. A union allows us student support and advising professionals to collectively envision and work towards a new reality of what it means to have our needs not just met, but also prioritized as UC employees. We will be more equipped to advocate for stronger protections, better salaries and working conditions, and address inequities as a unified front. It’s time to get organized! Join the movement. Join SSAP-UAW!
Tori White
Davis
Conversations about advisor burnout and advisor turnover have become repetitive and predictable, and I am weary of approaching leadership as supplicant pleading for the support we need to thrive and to support the thriving of our students. I feel lucky to be in a good position, but I know that the positives of my position could be altered or withdrawn at any moment depending on the inclinations of leadership. Through collective bargaining, however, advisors and student service professionals will have a say in our working conditions and student learning conditions. We’ll be able to protect what’s good about our jobs, and make powerful changes to improve our compensation, benefits, and flexibility. I’m as proud of the vital work advisors do in service of our students as I am inspired by labor movements across higher education and beyond. 2024 is the year we win a union!
Enrique Hernandez
Santa Barbara
As a relatively new advisor to UCSB, I was grateful for the opportunity to work in the same office that had allowed me to graduate. I was a first-gen, low-income, intersectional student who felt out of place in the institution, and it was only through the help of advisors that I was able to acheive my academic goals and obtain a position where I can now pay that work forward. However, my time in the UC has been marred with struggles to keep my head above water financially. Time and again, I have seen the important work my colleagues and I do be lauded as critical for the university to function, while simultaneously told we are not valued enough for raises or promotions. Through the union, we hope to make our voices heard and have our concerns addressed in ways that go beyond the vague promises of those in charge.
Ziva Armstrong
Berkeley
I have experienced how widely offices even on the same campus differ in staff support and pay for the same title. I have also seen how raises have not matched inflation for years, and seen colleagues be asked to do increasingly more work for no additional pay or changes in job title. I have felt powerless to make change as just one person. Without a union, we have no voice or leverage to ask to be treated equitably. But if we organize, we will have a seat at the table to ensure student services professionals across every UC campus earn equitable pay and are treated fairly, with reasonable workloads and reclassifications and paths toward promotion. I want to protect what I love about my work and change what needs to be improved by forming a union to work not just for myself but for all student services professionals in the UC.
Laurie Leyden
Los Angeles
Working with UCLA for 17 years has made realize that having a union sooner could have saved me and other staff members who were not unionized from feeling unsupported within their own departments. Through my time at UCLA, I started off in a unionized position and didn’t realize how lucky I was until after moving on to positions that were not unionized. As passionate as I am about the positions I’ve taken, I have been my own advocate when trying to point out injustices in my own work environment and other non-unionized staff have shared with me their own frustrations within their own positions. I believe being unionized will foster a culture of less feelings of inferiority and help like-minded individuals work together in creating the positive work conditions we deserve.
Jill Poe
San Francisco
As the cost of living and our health insurance premiums increase, my annual raises remain stagnant. By forming a union, we ensure we have a seat at the bargaining table when negotiating fair salaries and increases that will allow us to live in this beautiful state. I was raised in a Union household and am excited to continue the tradition by joining my colleagues in determining our own futures. #UnionStrong
Kerri McCanna
Irvine
Why do we need a Union and why am I signing? Simply, I have never known work without one. I joined the SEIU at 19; the AFT in my 20s when I became a teacher, and the AFL-CIO as a state employee in my 30s. Union membership has meant camaraderie, working for equity for all our members across the region, and having all members’ best interests, conditions, and wellbeing in mind. Most recently, I’ve watched union members take an adult child of a member who’d passed under their wing and mentor them. Union can be just for work, but Union is also like family.
Cyrus Howard
Santa Cruz
As a recent UCSC graduate and staff member for about two years, I have been on both sides of the work that student services professionals do. I see the effort we put into each interaction with students, the love we have for our line of work, and the dedication to increased student success. Unfortunately advisors are severely undervalued despite working tirelessly. We are at the frontline of student success, but the UC system doesn’t treat us like we are integral to the functioning of the university. Student services professionals deserve recognition for the work they do in concrete ways, in the form of living wages, equitable access to career advancement and so much more.
Kevin Franco
Los Angeles
There exists a toxic culture in higher education where the needs of staff are unprotected and overlooked. Forming a union establishes a collective voice for staff where we can participate in the democratic process of our needs, such as livable wages, positive working conditions, clear promotional pipelines, and equal representation amongst the institution, faculty, and students. Staff is what make the UC system operate, and without staff, the UC system would be paralyzed. It is time to change the culture in higher education in where staff are valued, respected, and uplifted.
Jacki Valadez
Berkeley
The work that advisors do is integral to the experiences students have at their college campus. However, many of us have very large caseloads and are struggling to make ends meet on our salaries. It is crucial that we form a union so as to voice these concerns, ensure that our wages are suitable for the cost of living, and cultivate a sense of community. Through this experience, I have learned that every bit of support matters. I am excited to support the union and see this people-led movement continue to flourish.
Jessie Rosales
Berkeley
Imagine a UC system where every voice matters. As a UC Berkeley commuter enduring 3-hour roundtrips, I understand the crucial need for flexible remote work options. This isn’t just my story – it’s a reality for many of us facing the high cost of living near UC campuses. Unionization is our pathway to equitable solutions. With a union, the University can no longer unilaterally decide our work conditions. Instead, we’d negotiate as equals, ensuring that remote and hybrid work options truly reflect the needs of students and staff. This is about more than convenience; it’s about fairness and accessibility. Without these options, many talented staff, constrained by financial realities, risk being edged out. A union empowers us to proactively shape our working environment, preventing these challenges before they arise. Join me in championing a union, not just for ourselves, but for a UC system that truly values every member of its community. Let’s unite for change.
Christine Mullarkey
Berkeley
In a system as complex as UC, student service professionals are key to student success and well-being. If we want students to succeed, we must also take care of the staff who support students. Unfortunately there is little consistency or support for the student service staff across the UC system. I believe forming a union is our best chance to create a healthy and sustainable work culture for those who work most closely with students.
Lacole Brooks
Davis
Thanks to having wonderful supervisors, I feel I’m better off in my work life than most other advisors I know. The problem is, none of the things I like about my job are protected. UC could change my working conditions without any input from me or my coworkers. Also, there are SSAPs who are not in as good a position as I am, and if my CAO or department chair changes, things could get worse for me too. That’s why forming a union is imperative! We all need to have a seat at the table. Just because we are doing a job we love doesn’t mean we don’t need a collective voice, equity, and to be compensated appropriately.
Nancy Correa
San Diego
I’m a Graduate Program Advisor at UC San Diego. I love my job, from the team that I work with to the students that I support. While I love what I do, we all have things that are important to us that we would like to see improved within our place of employment. My reason for wanting to unionize goes beyond an increase in salary, although with the high cost of living in San Diego it is definitely a big contributing factor. I want to be advocated for, the way that I advocate for my students in my role at UC San Diego. I support forming a union so that my colleagues and I have a greater voice to establish what we need to feel valued and cared for in our roles. I believe a union can help us make these things happen.
Mike Lambert
Los Angeles
I love my work with the students and faculty in UCLA’s Graduate Program in English. I always say, “If you don’t like to read, for God’s sake, surround yourself with people who do. It makes such a difference!” I support this organizing effort because I want to make a difference, too — a difference in UCLA’s culture, where student services professionals are treated with equity, respect, and fairness, particulary in the areas of salary and benefits and the elimination of uncompensated “job creep”. I can’t change this culture by myself, but together, I know that we can.
Teresa Nguyen
Davis
For a long time, I have been dreading and feeling tired of going to work everyday and not getting the respect, appreciation, and treatment that my coworkers and I deserve. Forming a union is important to me because I want better working conditions for everyone. I want people to be appreciated and valued. I want change.
Jeneen Mustafa
Santa Barbara
As a UCSB Alumni and Santa Barbara local, landing a position at UCSB had always been a dream of mine. I envisioned a career here as the path to security in Santa Barbara. Now that I am an academic advisor for the Education Abroad Program, I’ve come to realize that the UCSB I had idealized has fallen short of my expectations. While I love many things about my job, such as the vibrant college atmosphere, getting to work with so many inspiring students and of course my supportive colleagues, my discontent lies with the UC system itself as it appears to undervalue its employees. Evidence of this is that my current role has no clear career path, lacks work-life balance, and requires me to pay half my salary in rent. This situation is simply unsustainable, forcing many employees to have to take on second jobs or consider other career paths. I firmly believe that unionizing is the pathway to improving our working conditions, instead of just complaining about them.
Asbeidy Solano
Los Angeles
My father has been a unionized truck driver since I was a child, so I grew up hearing stories about workplace grievances and the collective power of a union. My father along with his coworkers were empowered to fight for better working conditions. Academic counselors are essential at the UC and we are an integral part in supporting student success. Forming a union that represents us would mean having a voice in improving our working conditions, have fair wages, stronger benefits, and better work-life balance. Under a union, we can provide better services for students. I support forming a union because as the daughter of a unionized father, my family had financial stability and a sense of security that my father was protected because there is power in numbers. Let’s fight for a UC where we feel valued, supported, and are paid what we deserve.
Jeyson Aldana
Santa Cruz
It is abundantly clear that student service professionals and advisors are a constant supportive role in any UC undergraduate’s career. From the incoming student orientation till graduation, we engage with students and strive to develop rapport while providing them the services they need. But then we are expected to perform administrative work outside our job descriptions, expected to continue professional development on top of our daily tasks, and then discouraged from seeking fair compensation or reclassification. We are championed and moralized but kept within a precarious livelihood. Without student service professionals and advisors, there is no student support in both success and hardship. If the UC cannot support me with at minimum a living wage, then I cannot reasonably support my students. Organizing is the greatest power us staff have, and our collective voice proves our strength!
Cory Graves-Montalbano
Santa Cruz
The great support I had from my own Music advisor as an undergraduate was a big part of what led me to now hold that same position. Assisting students in pursuing their passions in the Arts is an extremely rewarding endeavor, especially as a musician myself. However, our ability to effectively serve our students is hindered by inadequate pay that makes it financially infeasible to live near campus, unclear step/promotion structures, and frequent burnout due to ever-growing student-advisor ratios. So I’m highly motivated to unionize and address these issues (and more!) through collective bargaining in order to holistically change how Student Services Professionals are cared for, thus allowing us to better support our students.
Janean Kromka
San Diego
I truly believe that education changes lives generationally, which is why I decided to pursue a career in academic advising. Advisors are crucial to the success of students and should be valued and respected at the UC. Throughout my career I have witnessed many passionate and experienced advisors leave their positions because they cannot survive on the salary provided at the UC level. Forming a union will allow us to collectively negotiate fair pay, as well as to address the inconsistencies within our ever growing job responsibilities. As advisors, many of us tend to put others ahead of our own needs and just accept what we are given. I believe that it is time for us to advocate for ourselves collectively in order for advising to be a sustainable career pathway.
Imani Keeling
Davis
I like my work and the team I work with is amazing, but I definitely do not feel fairly compensated in pay. I have a UC Davis degree, but it dooesn’t feel like it’s being valued in terms of compensation. I do not feel like the recent equity wagaes we get match our experience or degrees. Our compensation and raises seem abritrary and don’t match my performmance reviews. The UC seems to decide our pay and benefits based on their budgets and not on our performance.
Tim Barbour
Santa Cruz
The University has a chronic compensation problem. It leads directly to high rates of turnover, with talented folks leaving in search of more livable wages. This turnover leads to the overwork and burnout of the remaning staff as they take on the duties of vacant positions, and are in a constant cycle of recruitment and onboarding. Moreover, there is functionally a hard limit on progress since we’re always held back by shifting and insufficient staffing.
Megan Rilla
San Francisco
When I started at UCSF, my position was part of a union and when I was going to be laid off due to budget cuts, the union stepped in to help me stay employed. Since I have changed job classifications, I have not had the protections that a union provides. Growing up in a pro union family, I recognize the advantages a union provides its workers and I want the other Student Services Professionals to also reap those benefits so we have a stronger voice to discuss our concerns.
Colin Goulding
Davis
SSAPs make up a broad and critical section of the workforce at UC. As custodians of vast amounts of institutional knowledge, SSAPs keep the University running on a daily basis. The cost of living has risen across the state year over year as SSAPs become less and less able to afford to live in near the places they work. Organizing to form a union allows SSAPs to advocate for the basic needs to survive and continue to provide the outstanding service our students and faculty desrve. We can also adviocate for safe work enviornments in the new Covid-19 reality we face on a daily basis. Together, we can work to ensure fair compensation and benefits for all SSAPs and have a voice in what happens at the institutions we support and cherish.
Holly Chadwin
Santa Barbara
UC is a world-renowned educational system, Nobel-winning research hub, and major regional and state employer. Yet staff—the backbone of it all—is treated as an afterthought. As housing and food costs soar, we cross our fingers in hopes of a 3-4% COL adjustment, while the UCSB Chanceller received a 28.4% raise in 2022, on top of free on-campus housing. Staff are forced to jump departments or leave campus entirely because there are no raises or promotions built into the system. Not-so-fun fact: the annual performance evaluation is weighted towards “Meets Expectations,” no matter how stellar the employee’s performance was. Staff is encouraged to “take advantage of resources,” “network with peers,” and “build your skill bank”–none of which address the fact that the university doesn’t provide a sustainable, market-stable future for employees.
With a union, we can negotiate for livable salaries, flexible working arrangements that work for staff (not just managers), reliable COLs, pathways for longevity within the same department, and a more sustainable future for the employees that keep the UC system running. There are hundreds of SSPs, and if we come together, we can make changes that will benefit all of us AND the UC system in the long-run.
Joseph DePage
Santa Cruz
Early in my career, I was part of the union drive in the early 2000s that organized our dining hall colleagues at UCSC. While I was hesitant about the movement at first, I later saw firsthand the way that a union supports and protects its workers. I saw too the raises and benefits that changed the lives of entire families. Finally, I saw the way that our staff were trained to become leaders and the newfound confidence and dignity that we shared.
It is encouraging and exciting to see a movement form across the UC’s that would help student support professionals as we guide and advise our students. Each of us knows the pain of a heavy rent burden, inflexible working arrangements, and an unhealthy work culture. It is time for the University of California to show the same care and attention to us as we show to our incredible students.
Hunter Lazar
Davis
As a newer advisor, I’ve heard numerous times that this job has very little opportunities to move up or increase pay, even when you’ve worked for a number of years. While I love working with students and want to continue to support their college journeys, I also want to make enough to support myself and my family. A union would absolutely give us that opportunity and would provide a voice for SSAPs to be able to do exactly that, continue supporting students and allow them opportunities to advance and have pay match their needs.
Laura McShane
Santa Cruz
For the UC, student success is a major talking point, with much hand-wringing increasing student engagement and retention. However, the university is unwilling to devote resources toward an important student-success tools they already have—advisors and Student Services professionals. Studies show that robust academic advising is vital to helping students succeed. At UC, however, advisors struggle to support students while faced with increasing workloads, high turnover, and unstable working conditions. UC SSAPs have a difficult time finding housing near their place of employment, as wages have not kept up with the cost of living. And the fact that raises and advancement are mostly nonexistent within one’s current position means that advisors need to leave their jobs to get ahead. It’s time to come together and hold the university accountable. If UC really wants students to succeed, they need to start by supporting the staff who support the students.
Leo Lamanna
Davis
It’s simple. As a former member of the Teamsters Union I know that the only way we can advocate for the working conditions and wages that we feel we deserve is by forming a union. With the power of collective bargaining we will see the full benefits of our advocacy to affect positive change in our jobs and environments and create some stability. Having worked in advising for over seven years now I have seen how changes in department priorities can positively and negatively affect the working conditions on the job from day to day. As I have brought my concerns to supervisors, they have been dismissed and I have been told that I can go work in a different department if I was not satisfied. I would like for all of us to have more say in these matters and forming a union is the only way to make our voices heard and taken seriously.
