The minimum wage for student workers increased to $15 per hour on Sept. 26. Previously, minimum wage was $10.33, causing a massive increase of $4.67 per hour for some jobs. 

This change has impacted some departments’ ability to hire workers, creating issues with staffing. The Art and Design department is one that has been severely impacted.

They felt the full effect of the $4.67 per hour wage increase. According to Rea Ann Johnson, executive office and administrative specialist at the Art and Design department, all their student workers were getting paid $10.33 per hour.

“We’re already budgeted for this year, to the penny,” Jane Ebersviller, administrative assistant at the department of Art and Design, said. The department already determined its budget before the wage increase announcement came on Aug. 3 and it didn’t include room to change their workers’ pay.

“We can’t afford to pay someone at that wage for the same hours,” Johnson said. Without as many hours, the department experienced trouble staffing some of its art studios.

The Viz lab is one of these studios. Devoted to an array of visual technologies, the lab has equipment that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible to students. It is currently available to students two days per week, significantly reduced from the six days the department wants to have it open.

“We had to drastically cut some hours,” Johnson said.

Additionally, the Art and Design department reduced the number of new hires this year. Usually, they hire 10 or more new student workers, but this year they have only been able to hire four.

The Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department has felt the effects of the wage increase too. This year, they started to seek out more students with work-study awards than they used to.

“I’ve never really worried whether a student had work-study or not because we had a budget that we could cover our student workers with, but this year I’ve made more of an effort to try to let students with work-study know that we would really like them to work,” Tracy Shaw, executive office and administrative specialist at the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department said. 

In part, this is due to the wage increase, but recent cuts to student worker funding has also left an impact. 

“I think it’s great that they raised the student worker job, minimum pay to $15 an hour,” Shaw said “This past year, it’s been really hard to get employees.” She also mentioned that the department has gotten more student applications this semester compared to last spring.

“They increased wages, which is great, but they gave us no help,” Ebersviller said. 

Unlike the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department, the Art and Design department was already heavily reliant on student’s with work-study awards to allow the department to fund their work. Their only option was to cut hours.

Darla Eckart, a student worker at the UMD bookstore has noticed reduced work hours.

“I’m going to be only getting like, $15 more a week then I was before anyways because they cut hours,” Eckart said. Eckart used to work up to 17 hours per week, but has now been cut down to 12 hours per week.

Kenneth Horstman, Vice President of the Office of Human Resources at the University of Minnesota doesn’t see this being a long term problem though.

“Overall, we expect that the new threshold will be manageable for departments across the system. Units can use salary reserves for the current fiscal year and the cost difference will need to be built into budgets for next year,” Horstman stated in an email. Essentially, Horstman is saying that the departments are on their own for now, but hopefully will get assistance next year.

“The university chose to raise our student worker wage floor to allow the university to be more competitive in recruiting and retaining student workers,”  Horstman said. “Employers surrounding university campuses statewide have raised their wages in response to a tight labor market.” 

Horstman explained that this increase was made to let the university compete with other employers. He hopes this will increase hiring and prevent student workers from looking for off-campus jobs.