Rutgers P4P Makes Gains in Advocacy Through Rally in New York City, Meeting With Department Officials

The Daily Targum • By Arishita Gupta • April 25, 2024

“Earlier this month, the Rutgers chapter of Payment for Placements (P4P) co-hosted a Day of Action by chapters at various New York universities.

P4P is a collaborative effort led by social work students nationwide to advocate for a prevalent issue affecting their community: compensation for more than 1,000 hours of labor each student in the program must complete to qualify for their licensing exam, according to a press release. The value of this work by the time of a student's graduation totals more than one billion dollars, spread over approximately 123 million hours of labor.

Lauren Korczakowski, a Rutgers School of Social Work alum, said she played a limited role in planning the event, which had several moving parts.

One element of the event she noted in particular was the attendance of Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, which she said energized the P4P members.

Another facet of the event she discussed was creating a paper mache boulder to represent the magnitude of the debt social work students often face.”

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