Bianca Gallegos
It appears student workers at Pierce College who are getting paid through the Los Angeles Community College District are more likely to encounter a payroll related problem.
“Last semester I wasn’t getting paid,” said Xavier, a student worker at the Freudian Sip who requested his last name not be used. “I didn’t get paid for over a month.”
Xavier said the same problem occurred to other student workers he knew. “A lot of people were not getting paid at all or were getting paid for less hours,” he said.
Xavier said some of the problems may have had to do with the fact that the payroll system changed for the college district in fall of 2005.
The problem eventually got fixed for Xavier and he hasn’t had any discrepancies with his pay checks since.
According to the payroll department, it takes about three weeks for a student’s paperwork to get processed.
Pay checks get delayed when a student doesn’t properly fill out the required paperwork or completes the required form needed to formalize employment late.
According to Lagrand Powell, from classified management, the payroll department doesn’t keep track of the number of students getting hired.
“The role of the payroll department is to process the required paperwork and provide the pay checks,” said Powell. “We are not involved in the hiring or salary decisions.”
Powell said that sometimes the paperwork doesn’t start getting processed because the student’s supervisor doesn’t complete their part of the hiring process of notifying the payroll department of their recent hire, thus further delaying the student pay check.
Financial Aid workstudy coordinator Joni Vitone said 83 student workers have been hired through the financial aid federal workstudy program for the fall 2005 through spring 2006 academic year.
The financial aid federal workstudy program is different from the regular student workers. Students on the workstudy program receive financial aid.
Vitone said the students working through the federal work-study program get their pay checks from the federal budget. However, some students out of the 83 hired, have quit so the number of students working under the program constantly changes.