With approximately one month left in the fall ’08 semester, students are still struggling to get paid for their on-campus jobs. There are some students that have gone the entire semester without receiving a paycheck from USF.
When the Foghorn attempted to contact the USF Payroll Department, we were left without answers. Interviews were scheduled with members of the payroll department only to be canceled by the interviewees the day of.
Assistant Director of Human Resources for Payroll services, George Chin, was contacted several times for an interview.
Unfortunately, Mr. Chin did not respond to the several attempts made by a Foghorn reporter to contact him. When he did respond, Mr. Chin said he was not available for comment before deadline for this week’s issue.
Mr. Chin is responsible for overseeing all payroll activities at USF.
We would like to take this opportunity to ask Mr. Chin why student employees on campus are not getting paid on-time and some not at all.
We encourage Mr. Chin and/or anyone else in the payroll department to speak with the Foghorn or with students directly about this issue and explain to the hard working students of this university are not receiving paychecks.
Students deserve to know where their money is, when they are going to receive it, and why it is taking so long to receive those checks.
Without students working in USF’s offices, as Resident Advisors, at Crossroads, the library, as tutors, or anywhere else you find student employees, our campus would not be the same.
We constantly hear talk about the USF community.
We live in a community together. Our community would not function as effectively as it does now without the hard work of these student employees.
Now the leaders of our community are neglecting to fairly compensate hardworking students for their contribution to that same community we hear so much about.
Requesting to be paid on time is not too much to ask from our school. It is a minimal and basic request that should be met without students having to fight for it.
As we stated in our last editorial, students must shoulder some responsibility by filling out timesheets on time.
If the online timesheets on USFConnect are not working, request a paper timesheet.
Be persistent and take every measure necessary to ensure your check is available on-time.
After this point, it is the responsibility of the payroll department to disperse checks to all student employees on time, which is not happening right now.
This problem needs to come to a resolution immediately. It has gone too far and cannot continue any longer.
We are calling on the USF administration to show good faith and to take immediate action towards permanently fixing this problem, as it reflects poorly on USF and the value USF places on its students.
