Employee hour cuts to take effect July 1

Starting July 1, one hour will be the only thing that will keep IU employees, as well as all employees in the U.S., ineligible for health care through their employer.

To comply with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that states employers must offer health care to full-time employees, IU will be cutting part-time employees’ hours down to the minimum.

The ACA now classifies a full-time employee as working at least 30 hours per week. This is a reduction from the prior full-time classification of 40 hours per week.

Associate Vice President for University Human Resources Daniel Rives sent an email late April that said the number of hours worked shall be limited to 29 hours per week with no eligibility for medical coverage.

Mark Land, vice president of communications for IU, said the structure changes will be made to meet IU’s budget of $230 million, a $15 million increase from last year, on health care in the fiscal year of 2014. IU will insure more than 17,000 employees across Indiana.

IU also already spends an additional $19 million to provide health coverage to 5,000 medical residents and graduate assistants.

“This (structure change) is a response to the changes in health care coverage as a result of the ACA ... IU, which provides some of the most generous health benefits of any employer in the state, is working to balance its responsibility to taxpayers to keep operating costs as low as possible, while providing competitive wages and benefits to its employees,” Land said in an email.

The American Association of University Professors had expressed their concerns in a statement released in April regarding the new policy and how it will affect part-time professors in the U.S.

The AAUP were “dismayed by news reports of a handful of colleges and universities that have threatened to cut the courseloads of part-time faculty members specifically in order to evade this provision of the law.”

Land said adjunct professors who get paid by the course, not the hour, should not be affected by this law. More IU employees will actually be provided medical coverage under the new changes.

Student employees are not expected to experience much change as many of them work less than 30 hours a week.