The IU Board of Trustees approved an immediate increase in the minimum wage Friday for all appointed staff to $13.66 an hour, which will further increase to $15 beginning July 1, the beginning of the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
IU spokesperson Chuck Carney said this minimum wage increase will affect appointed staff, which are nonacademic support, service, or professional staff who are paid an hourly rate, and does not affect professional staff who are paid monthly.
The measure, proposed by IU President Michael McRobbie, is the result of a plan approved by the trustees in 2017 to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
The minimum wage had been steadily increasing since 2017 but the increase was halted during the pandemic, when the minimum wage remained at $12.33 an hour, Carney said.
Increasing the minimum wage to $15 will further put IU’s minimum wage above $7.25, which is both the federal minimum wage and the state minimum wage in Indiana. This decision also puts IU on equal footing with universities such as the University of Memphis, which will raise its minimum wage to $15 by June 5, as well as many other universities.
The increase corresponds to an increasing effort by IU to provide for their employees. In 2017, the trustees passed a measure providing fully paid parental leave for all staff. In 2019 they approved a plan to increase the university contribution to the IU Retirement and Savings Plan for support staff and service staff to 10%.
