u/Comfortable_Owl3668

Reposting this Reddit Post from 2 months ago. Please spread the information about this to people you know that is going to be a SYEP Participant at a worksite soon. There are new information that I have included that wasn’t there before.

As you all know, SYEP will be starting very quickly soon in July. You will split into either Cohort A or B.

Many SYEP participants while working at their worksites generally don’t report the horrible issues they experience at their worksites by their supervisors or other co-workers.

Such as:

- Your supervisor tells you to do anything that is not in the job description of your role. That also includes telling you to leave to go somewhere else that is not related to the work of your job description

- Acting passive aggressively

- Making you feel uncomfortable in any way like standing too close to you, touching you where you don’t want to be touched, etc.

- Yelling at you. Verbal and emotional abusing you

- Not communicating clearly and enough with you leading to many misunderstandings and confusions

- Talking about political beliefs and their beliefs offends you. Any beliefs that made you uncomfortable or make you angry while during work hours has to be reported immediately

- Telling you that you owe them hours and they authorize your 25 hours per week by falsifying your timesheet even though you didn’t work 25 hours for those weeks so you need to stay back after the 6 weeks to pay back your debt to them

- Collecting personal information from you like your ID, social security, etc. Only give them these if they are planning to give you a permanent job offer after the 6 weeks are over!

Beginning and during the 6 weeks, they are not allowed to ask you for your personal information! Read up on I-9 verification on the USCIS website when you are offered a permanent job because many employers on purposely ask for more documents than what is necessary to steal your personal information.

- Asking you to stay after the 6 weeks to help them with their work without paying you. There is no such thing as free labor. Any work you do that benefits the worksite and during the worksite’s business hours after the 6 weeks ends, you are to be paid by your worksite. SYEP does not pay you anymore after the 6 weeks of the program ends! You are only paid for 6 weeks worth of work at most!

- Making or manipulating you to stay later than your scheduled hours.

- Gives you no break if you worked 6 or more hours. Legally they are required to give you 30 mins break if you are working 6 or 7 hours that day and 1 hour break if you are working more than 7 hours that day. The breaks are unpaid.

- Any supervisor or co-worker retaliating against for addressing issues that you noticed

- One of your co-workers that is a SYEP participants too, is bullying you and causing you problems to the point where you hate going to this worksite.

- Your coworker doesn’t do anything and you are always end up doing the work for them. You are not obligated to pick up after them

- Other similar issues like the ones I listed

You need to report these kind of issues, so you can be sent to a new worksite. It is for your safety and the safety of future participants. If your SYEP provider doesn’t know about it, then they will assume everything went well and they will keep working with those worksites in the future. Your SYEP provider needs to know everything that is going on at your worksite to see if they should work with them again in the future. Hold these worksites and other co-workers accountable for their actions especially the moment you know that something is off. Listen to that feeling.

I know many of you are afraid of reporting your worksite who have done something wrong and the idea of switching to a different worksite sound bad, but your goal in SYEP is to get a job you enjoy doing and where you had actually learned something.

Once a week, there is one SYEP Site Monitor that arrives at your worksite to inspect any issues that you may have, so please report any issues, concerns, and questions to them as they will report the issues on your behalf. Everything you say will be confidential and anonymous. You can speak with them privately. If you prefer to email your SYEP provider instead, you can do that too. Make sure to have proof of your claims otherwise there is no case.

So please report any issues that immediately happens to you, otherwise you will be stuck in that worksite with that supervisor and co-worker for the next 6 weeks. Which is going to be hell. Make your summer job as comfortable as possible and not to have memories where your supervisor or co-workers who was acting like an asshole or a bitch.

Please remember, for the 6 weeks, you are paid by the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development, not your worksite!

Feeling unheard about the issues on campus? Budget cuts are a huge issue for you whether you are a student, faculty, and staff? Campus security doesn't make you feel safe to be on campus?

If you are a student, faculty, or staff, now is your chance to speak out about all of the issues that you have been seeing on this campus physically, administratively, etc. There is a public hearing been held at LaGuardia Community College on May 11th at 4:30 PM. You can express your opinion about Queens College to the CUNY Board Members at the meeting.

You may also submit a written statement to hearings@cuny.edu about the issues about Queens College. The deadline to submit a written statement due tomorrow by noon. If you need to say something, start writing everything about Queens College that you know needs fixing.

All information about the public hearing is in this link:

https://www.cuny.edu/main/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/page-assets/about/trustees/meetings-of-the-board/QNSBH_Notice_05112026.pdf

Queens College is doing big budget cuts for the next year across every single department that is on campus for the next fiscal year that starts in July. There might be a reduction or shift in business hours, staff and faculty might be reduced to a smaller size, etc.

Exactly how big are the budget cuts?
No idea as of right now. Every staff and faculty are still waiting on the news about it. But the budget cuts could go as much as 25%!

Prepare yourselves for the impact that is going to happening from the budget cuts. Big changes are coming!!!