All around the country, hours are being cut for part-time employees due to the newly instated Affordable Care Act according to TheNew York Times. As a result of this, a number of UT students who work part time on campus are struggling financially from only receiving a limited amount of hours.
“I was extremely upset by this because I am an independent student who pays for pretty much everything on my own,” said a senior exercise science major who asked to be kept anonymous. “As an RA, I do not have a meal plan so I buy all my food. When I found out that I could only work 4 hours on campus between the four jobs that I had, I knew that I was going to be forced to quit jobs and seek off-campus employment just to be able to feed myself.” She found out about this new rule at RA orientation in spring of 2014.
The new healthcare law is requiring large employers consisting of at least 50 full-time employees (more than 30 hours a week) to provide quality coverage or pay a fine of $2,000 per employee after the first 30, according to Forbes. This fine is collected monthly, so if an employee works 30 hours a week for one month, that would be 120 hours.
Let’s say the employee gets one hour of overtime which pushes them into the range of what is to be considered full time, this means that the employer will be asked to pay a fine of $166.67 just because that part-time employee worked one more hour than he or she was supposed to, according to Forbes. Mind you, that fine is just for one hour over the allotted hours for part time employees. If they started getting into the three or four hour territory, that total would add up fast.
I’d say the only issue here is Obama Care. The employees are getting frustrated with their employers for cutting back their hours, but they have good reason. That fine is a good chunk of money, and no business can afford to put forth that kind of cash every month and stay in business. This process is also helping to monitor hours, especially overtime, but I still think it could use some tweaking because these businesses need to keep their employees happy as well. Now, the employers on the UT campus are not even giving the part time student employees their maximum amount of hours. That is a problem. With such a limitation of hours, students should be receiving the max amount of hours they are entitled to, especially if they want to and are able to work them.
“Obama Care Act allows students to work up to 30 hours on campus, UT has limited us to 24,” the RA said. “Those four hours would give me more money to both feed myself and pay for other necessary living expenses. I think UT should either expand the hours to 28 or at least give RA’s a meal plan to make up for the fact that we don’t even get paid minimum wage per hour for the “20 hours. We apparently work per week in our position.” Since RAs do not receive minimum wage, they receive money off of housing. It is called a work study employment. She receives $1,000 per semester to help pay for housing on campus and depending on the building and the size of your room, housing costs can range from about $1,800 to almost $5,000, according to the UT website.
I also work part time at an off campus job, and I agree with her that every hour counts. I’m not even responsible for all of my bills, and I still find myself tight on money at times. I think all college students can attest to feeling broke quite often or even all of the time.
And this RA is not the only student employee feeling frustrated. “All of my coworkers are aggravated about this because most of us are RA’s solely for monetary purposes,” she said.
Because of such a limitation on her hours she has been forced to seek off campus employment as well, but since she cannot afford to pay for a car or car insurance, her options are strictly limited.
“Full time employees are not going to suffer much from this new law” said Ken Jacobs who is the chairman of the labor center at UC Berkeley, according to The Huffington Post. Most employers will not cut full time worker’s hours from 40 hours to 30, but only those that are right on the edge of hitting 30 hours each week. If you’re not a full time employee and your hours vary each week, you are most likely going to be affected by the new healthcare law if you’re not already being affected by it, according to The Huffington Post.
A study done in 2012 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded that 75.3 million workers in the United States were paid hourly, and out of that 1.6 million workers ages 16 and over earned minimum wage which was $7.25 an hour and as of 2014 is now $7.93. Other states like D.C. have raised it all the way to $9.50, according to ncsl.org. Out of that 1.6 million that only received minimum wage, people under the age of 25 made up about half of them. In 2011, it was recorded that 31.1 million 18 to 24 year olds were enrolled in college, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. So, I think it’s safe to say that most people living off of minimum wage are college students. Now, granted that doesn’t mean that all of those college students are relying solely on their part time income to provide for themselves, but there are people out there like this senior at UT and I’m sure she is not the only one, and now hours are being cut.
It seems unfair, because students like this senior just want to work hard so they can pay their bills and keep going to school. I feel so blessed to have the benefit of having help from my parents, which some do not. However, I do sympathize with those that struggle, which is a lot of college students, and hopefully there will be a solution for this issue so that UT students can put time aside for focusing on their classes.