The Illinois minimum wage increase signed into law in December might cause more harm than good on Eastern’s campus when it takes effect this summer.

The legislation will raise the state minimum wage from $6.50 to $7.50 an hour on July 1. The rate will continue to increase by 25 cents each year for the next three years until it rests at $8.25 an hour in 2010.

While the increase should pad the paychecks of the approximate 2,200 student workers at Eastern earning minimum wage, it could be harmful for departments with student workers that have to find a way to pay for the increase.

Nancy Dole, student employment adviser in the financial aid office, expects most departments to adjust their budgets accordingly to make up for the change.

“Each department has a budget for student employment,” Dole said. “I’m assuming that deans and directors are all planning for this.”

Allen Lanham, dean of Library Services, said he was watching the minimum wage legislation before it passed and is now hoping extra funds will come through to help pay student salaries at the library once the increase takes effect.

“Unless funds are identified to increase the amount of money we have to pay for student assistance, then we would have to make adjustments in the number of hours students could be available for work,” Lanham said. “Or it could just be that we have fewer positions.”

To maintain the same number of work hours for students in the library, Lanham said the library budget will need an additional $20,000 to pay for the increase in the library’s 100 to 150 student salaries.

“Increases like this in the minimum wage basically are treated like other costs of doing business which go up,” said Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs. “We have to manage the existing budget to accommodate them.”

The increase will be figured into the new budget for the coming year since the increase and the start of the budget year occur at the same time, Lord said.

In 2003, the library had to reduce student hours when the state minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $6.50 an hour. Lanham does not know if the quality of the library can be maintained if hours have to be cut again.

“We’ve been reeling from the last time they raised minimum wage,” he said.

Housing and dining, another major student employer on campus, also had to find a way to deal with the wage increase in 2003, said Mark Hudson, director of housing and dining.

They also reduced student worker hours by cutting back computer lab hours in 2003.

But Hudson said the university is going to have to find a different way to account for the new increase.

“This time we felt like we’d (cut hours) already, so we had to find a way to pay for the increased expense,” he said.

Housing and dining employs about 800 students a year at a price of about $1.5 million, Hudson said. The 2007 rate increase is going to require about $250,000 in additional funds.

“We’re in a situation where we employ students that play very critical roles,” he said. “Obviously the money has to come from somewhere.”

And some of it will be coming from an increase in room and board for on-campus students next year, Hudson said.

The proposed increase room and board rates will be presented at the Board of Trustees meeting Friday.

Hudson said nearly 1 percent of the proposed increase will be to make up for the increase in minimum wage.

“We just have to adjust the rate accordingly,” Hudson said. The proposed 6.9 percent increase is also based on inflation rates and climbing energy costs.

Devin Taylor, a sophomore English major and on-campus resident, has been working at the university bookstore since her freshman year and is not looking forward to the minimum wage increase this summer.

“I personally don’t think minimum wage should increase because it affects the rest of the economy,” Taylor said.

She expects to have to spend her increased salary in other areas when prices go up to balance the wage increase.

“In the long run I’ll end up spending that money,” she said. “It’s not like I’ll have any extra money in my pocket.”

Taylor said she would rather go without the increase and in turn keep her room and board rates from rising.

She added that like many student workers, she clocks in only six hours a week at work, which will add less than $6 to her paycheck a week after taxes.

Taylor is also a part of Eastern’s work study program which limits her to a predetermined number of hours available to work each year.

Most students in the work study program organized through the financial aid office are offered a full award of 1,200 hours of work a year, Dole said.

“Of those with the 1,200 award, the majority did not earn that so we didn’t have to make an adjustment in the past,” Dole said of past minimum wage increases.

With students not earning their total award amounts, there was enough money to go around. Dole said the financial aid office will have to wait until after the fall 2007 semester to see if that will be the case again. If students are working all of their allotted hours, the number of hours approved in a full award in the work study program might have to be lowered if there is not enough money available after the minimum wage increase.

“In the past, we did not change the total dollar amount that they could earn,” Dole said. “Once we go through the fall semester to see how fast the students are earning their awards, I imagine we’ll reevaluate then. We usually do every couple of years.”