Krystal Geeson
Staff Writer
For many years, departments, such as the Division of Student Affairs, have adopted an internal practice that student employees will not work more than 20 hours per week.
Brian Sagendorf, director of human resources at Idaho State University, said that the school is discussing a potential internal policy option to provide a consistency throughout departments.
Consistency across the departments and benefits provided are two of the factors driving this policy.
“Benefits come into play, but they are not the only reason. It is something we have to keep in mind with the shared responsibility provisions with the Affordable Care Act that will take effect in 2015. If we don’t change our practices, there would be some significant additional costs to the university,” said Christiansen.
According to the IRS website, for purposes of the employer shared responsibility provisions, an employee is a full-time employee for a calendar month if he or she averages at least 30 hours of service per week. Since ISU has more than 50 full-time employees, it would be required to extend the health insurance coverage to anyone working more than 30 hours a week on average.
This would not just impact student employees but also temporary employees who work 30 hours a week or more.
Myka Rangel, a student supervisor for the Information Technology (IT) service desk, currently works 29 hours per week for the university.
“A lot of us are married and have kids, and this job is where we make money so we can live. Having our hours cut because of some policy is aggravating. I will have to deal with the cuts,” said Rangel.
For ISU, multiple considerations come into play when discussing options to ensure compliance under the Affordable Care Act.
Many of these items for discussion could have heavy impacts on the university finances.
“There would be benefit implications if we do not change our practices. We would need to plan for, and budget appropriately, to cover a large volume of people under group insurance benefits that haven’t been covered previously,” said Sagendorf.
Benefits are not the only reason for a new policy. A long-standing need for student work hours to be standardized across campus was expressed.
“It’s been a concern at times to students as to why does one department allow more hours to be worked than others,” said Sagendorf.
No policy decision has been made about hour limitations campus-wide thus far. July 1 would be the earliest a policy could go into effect, but there is no guarantee a decision will be made by then.
Potentially, departments may need to employ more students than they have previously.
There is concern that if a policy is put into place which limits hours that customer service would decrease because of a quick hiring rate. Sagendorf recognized that human resources will need to address the potential implications while drafting the policy.
Currently, there is not a draft policy. Once a draft policy is completed it would have to be proposed to the campus community. This would give the public a 30 day comment period so all managers and the community of ISU can respond with input or feedback. After the period ends, it would be presented before cabinets, the vice president and to the president for potential adoption.
