The minimum wage in Washington, District of Columbia rose from $8.25 to $9.50 an hour on July 1, increasing the wages for many AU student jobs. The change is the first of three wage increases created by the Minimum Wage Amendment Act of 2013.
The act calls for scheduled pay-raises of $1 each year until 2016, when the minimum wage will cap at $11.50 an hour, according to the D.C. Department of Employment Services.
Universities around the metropolitan area must increase pay for all workers in the District, including students.
The wage increase should not affect the availability of student jobs and the school is doing its best to ensure the security of AU’s student jobs, Ganiat Harris, assistant director of Service Delivery for the AU’s Human Resource department, said.
“We don’t want this policy to aversely affect [departments from] hiring students or part-time employees,” Harris said. “We are committed to protecting employment opportunities for our students.”
The University’s main goal is to ensure job availability will not go down due to the increase in minimum wage, Assistant Director of Budget for the University budget office Erica Smith said.
“We do not want departments to factor the minimum wage increase into their decision making process in terms of what their staffing needs are,” Smith said. “We want departments to feel comfortable taking the actions they need to staff their departments and meet their needs.”
Harris is currently working with AU’s Budget Office to get an idea of how the minimum wage increase will impact the budgets of departments all over campus.
“We are now working with the budget office to meet the financial need [of departments],” Harris said.
The University’s budget office is using a “top-down approach” to gather information, which will be used to determine how much additional funding each department will need due to the increased wages, according to Harris.
“We really rely on student employees to help keep the university running,” Harris said. “We still need them. They are still an essential part of our operations.”
However, if the rise in minimum wage does not affect the hiring decisions of employers, College of Arts and Sciences junior Alessandra Lacson said she believes it will certainly affect the way shifts are distributed.
Lacson works at AU’s Greenberg Theatre through the Federal Work Study program.
As a Federal Work Study student, Lacson can only make $1,800 a year through her financial aid award package. She will have to be careful how many shifts she works per week so she doesn’t use up all her hours and meet her reward too quickly, Lacson said.
“[At the Greenberg], because a lot [of employees] are work study [students], we’ll get paid more in a shorter amount of time, but we won’t get to work as much as we usually do,” Lacson said.
The Davenport Coffee Lounge will have a similar problem due to its high number of Federal Work Study students, according to General Manager Rebecca Regan, a 2010 SOC alumnus.
Regan will continue to ensure that her employees are scheduled so they gain their full reward from Federal Work Study, she said.
Regan agreed that while the minimum wage increase will not allow students to work as many hours as they had before, the extra time could be used constructively.
“That could open up opportunities for them to maybe get internships or stuff that they couldn’t do before because they didn’t have time, so I imagine [the rise in minimum wage] would be great for them,” Regan said.
