With the state of Connecticut raising minimum wage, will UConn follow suit? Photos by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash.
In May, Gov. Ned Lamont signed off on a bill to increase minimum wage in Connecticut from $10.10 per hour to $15 per hour. This raise will go into effect officially June 1, 2023, and will gradually increase by $1 per year until then.
Whether or not University of Connecticut students approve of this change, there is one thing we can all agree on: We would like to see UConn’s plan for implementing these higher wages.
UConn hires many minimum wage workers, and many of them are students. When wages rise, UConn has to have enough money to pay all the students, hopefully without cutting their hours or reducing staff.
And yes, UConn does have a plan on paper of how much wages will increase by in the coming years depending on the jobs performed and how much these workers currently earn per hour.
However, UConn does say where they’ll get the funding to raise so many wages, but hopefully it won’t include raising tuition exorbitantly.
If you think about it, increasing $10.10 to $15 is a difference of $4.50. If a student works, for example, a four hour shift, instead of earning $40.40, the student is now earning $60. This is a difference of $19.60 for only one shift for only one student. Even if the student only works one shift per week for a 14 week semester, the student is still earning $840 as opposed to $565.60. And remember what I said before — this is only one student.
With the number of minimum wage workers that UConn has, the university should release a plan detailing exactly what they’ll do to implement these changes, how they’ll accommodate the wage increase and how they’ll get enough money to pay all of the workers who earn a minimum wage salary. Hopefully, they will do so soon.
