PIERCE COLLEGE : Budget Shortfall to Force Student Worker Layoffs

Pierce College plans to lay off an undetermined number of its about 300 student workers as part of an effort to cope with a $300,000 shortfall in the school’s $25.2-million 1989-90 budget.

Pierce administrators are also freezing supply and equipment budgets, terminating eight disabled workers hired temporarily last fall to clean the campus and delaying the installation of a new telephone system. The disabled workers are to be laid off May 14.

The student worker layoffs will hit foreign students particularly hard, because their visas often do not allow them to have off-campus jobs. Foreign students represent about 1% of Pierce’s students but make up a greater percentage of its workers. Six student library aides are among those who will lose their jobs this month.

Jackie Zook, a media technical assistant at the library, said that will cause problems. “Once midterms hit, we are busy all of the time with overdue fines, indexing, training other student helpers and helping students,” Zook said.

Bill Norlund, vice president for administration, said he did not know how many student workers would be laid off.

He said it depends on how many departments have used up the money they were allotted to pay student worker wages.

“Normally, if a department spends all of its student worker money, we can augment that at the end of the semester,” Pierce President Dan Means said. “But this semester we don’t have any money to do that.”