Working Bulldogs will see a few more dollars in their paycheck this year as the minimum wage makes another increase. Starting Monday, Jan. 1, minimum wage was raised from $8.90 to $9.25 an hour. This is the final minimum wage raise in a series of four increases beginning in 2014, according to Ferris Manager of Student Employment John Randle.
“Every student that’s making $8.90 or $9 or anything less than $9.25 will automatically be moved up to $9.25. Students that are currently above $9.25 are not going to be automatically increased and if their supervisor feels that they should be increased and they have the funding in their budget, they would have to go in and manually request that those individuals be increased,” Randle said.
In addition to the minimum wage raise, Randle said the awards for work study have been increased as well.
“We did increase the work study award amount to accommodate that, so students can work the same amount of hours. If you keep getting more per hour and you have a limited amount to earn, you’re not gaining anything. So we did increase the awards to allow students to work more hours,” Randle said.
Increase in minimum wage can cause some workers to worry about hours being cut. However, Randle said Ferris is working to increase budgets to allow students to continue to work.
“Our budget people that determine the budget that go to all of the departments, they are very concerned that student hours don’t get reduced. So they try to give more money to the departments to offset the minimum wage so they can still work the same hours,” Randle said.
Although the 35 cent increase won’t make Ferris student workers go from rags to riches, many are pleased with the minimum wage raise, such as Ferris social work sophomore Cassie Deising, who works at the Ferris Student Code of Conduct Office.
“I think it’s a really good thing that it’s going up. I think I will see a difference because I’m only making eight-something right now and also my hours were kind of cut short, like a couple hours less a week than I’m doing now, so those extra couple dollars might come in handy,” Deising said.
Others, such as Ferris information security and intelligence senior and FLITE library page Megan Kludy are supportive of the raise but don’t feel that it needs to be increased more.
“It’s always nice when wages go up but I stand with the consensus that minimum wage is for high school and college students. I don’t think minimum wage is meant to be a livable income, just a source of extra cash or to pay small bills,” Kludy said.
Randle said that although there are no more approved minimum wage increases at the state level, Ferris individually reviews wage increases and will raise minimum wage on campus if the state goes a long time without an increase in minimum wage.
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