The 30-hour rule:
One of the stipulations of the Affordable Care Act is the 30-hour rule, and Ball State has had to make several changes to accommodate the mandate.
Cause: The 30-hour rule requires employers to provide health insurance to employees who work more than an average of 30 hours a week.
Effect: Ball State is redefining some of its part-time positions and cutting hours of some workers, including graduate students.
Source: gpo.gov and Randy Howard, vice president of Business Affairs and treasurer
• In response to part of the Affordable Care Act, Ball State is cutting some hours and redefining some part-time jobs.*
• Students should not see much change unless they work in the academic year as well as the summer.
• Graduate students have already had a small drop in the number of university hours they can work outside of their assistantships.
Ball State employees who currently have health care benefits will not lose those benefits because of the new health care law.
In an email sent out this week, Randy Howard, vice president of Business Affairs and treasurer, said one of the guiding principles of Ball State’s compliance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is to avoid reductions in health care.
“No employee or employee classification will lose health care benefits as a result of these guidelines,” Howard said in the email. “Furthermore, some part-time employees have been or will be reclassified into positions that become eligible for medical and prescription benefits effective January 1, 2015.”
The 30-hour rule, or the Employer Shared Responsibility Mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will not take effect until January 2015, but the university is evaluating employee hours to prepare to comply.
The measurement period began early this October and will last until October 2014.
Howard said more than 81 percent of Ball State employees will not face changes to their hours during the measurement period, including any employee who has health benefits.
John Knox, the student employment coordinator, said students are restricted to 20 hours a week during the regular academic year in order to receive an exemption from contributing to Social Security and Medicare.
Students working in the summer, however, may see their hours cut, because the 20-hour a week restriction does not apply.
“My concern is for students who work through the academic year and through the summer, like those who go to summer school and work for the university during that time,” Knox said.
Those students will likely exceed 1,560 hours a year, which is the threshold for when an employer has to provide health insurance.
Graduate students have already seen a reduction in their hours during the evaluation period — instead of being able to work 10 hours in an on-campus job in addition to their 20-hour assistantship, they can now only work an extra nine hours per week.
Knox said graduate students planning to work on campus during the summer may see cuts.
“[The 30-hour a week rule] will greatly reduce the amount of time they can work over the summer, should they choose to,” he said. “[The calculation] will come out around 100 hours above the year hour allotment.”
Knox said the university looks at Kronos records for total hours of student employment to make sure students are in compliance with the mandate.
He said the university will have more information about employee hours rules as the speculations are evaluated and put into practice during the summer.
“During the course of summer months, it will be less of observation and more putting into practice what is anticipated to be the rule,” he said. “If we go over during the course of the month, then we have to reevaluate all of those positions.”
Contract semester faculty and temporary employees will remain ineligible for benefits and have limits on the credit hours they can teach or hours they can work.
Howard said they will reclassify between 40 to 60 part-time positions for health benefits in January 2015. These positions will require between 30 to 39 hours of service each week.
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