Hofstra student employees form a student workers coalition amidst unfair wages.// Photo courtesy of Sharon McCutcheon.

As Hofstra Student Employment sends out an appreciation email to student employees to celebrate National Student Employment Week, students across campus claim they are being unfairly paid. Hofstra student employees are paid less than the Nassau County minimum wage of $15 per hour. 

“The school is paying less than what a living wage is, and it doesn’t make sense,” said Julia Manwaring, a junior dance and psychology double major. Manwaring works as a pride guide for Hofstra Admissions and is paid $9.50 an hour. 

The university is allowed to pay students less than minimum wage under a provision of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act. This legal loophole enables universities to apply for a certificate from the Department of Labor to hire student workers and pay them less than the minimum wage in their area. 

“New York state’s minimum wage does not apply to students working at their own college,” said Karla Schuster, assistant vice president of the Office of University Relations. “Hofstra’s student employee pay schedule is designed to offer employment opportunities to the largest number of students.”

However, a number of students are facing financial difficulties due to their minimal pay. “I don’t know if the university understands how financially independent some students are,” Manwaring said. “We do have a variety of students here from different socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Brianna Brown, a junior early childhood and childhood education major, works as a Resident Safety Representative (RSR) and is paid $9.50 an hour. According to Brown, if she worked from midnight to 8 a.m., she could make $11 an hour, but those hours are not cohesive with her class schedule and overall health. Additionally, she does not feel financially secure and feels that she would benefit from her wage being raised to minimum wage. 

“I know that this summer is going to be a big struggle for me because I’m living on my own for the first time,” Brown said. “Apartments are so [expensive] right now, it feels impossible to find anything that I could potentially afford.”

Olivia Kuch, a junior English major with a concentration in publishing studies, also works as an RSR and feels that she should be paid at least the Nassau County minimum wage for the work she does. “I pay so much money to go to this university, and I’m doing a job for them that’s really important for the safety of the school,” she said. “I keep people who shouldn’t be coming into these buildings from coming in … I feel like I deserve to be paid a little bit more.”

Kuch and Brown are not the only RSRs who feel this way. According to Emily Arthur, a junior political science and global studies double major and an RSR, a number of students complained at a RSR training meeting about the wages they were paid. “All of my friends who do RSR, they need the money and it’s really hard for them to remain financially upright,” she said.

During the RSR training meeting, the polling platform Slido was used for students to submit anonymous comments, suggestions and questions. When the topic of student employees being paid less than minimum wage came up, “The Slido was blowing up,” Arthur said. 

Some of the messages on Slido said things like, “This should be illegal,” “Why do we conform to NY state labor laws for unpaid breaks, but don’t get paid NY state minimum wage?” and “It’s very frustrating to be told how important our job is for the safety of campus and be paid less than minimum wage.”

In light of the recent student employee wage controversy, a group of students have begun to organize a student workers coalition. “Our biggest goal is to get $15 an hour base pay for all student employees,” said Ryder Lazo, a junior history and German double major and one of the students organizing the coalition. “[For] positions such as RSRs that work shifts that are very late at night or very early in the morning, we would like them to have an increased pay for those hours of $17.”

There was a previous Hofstra Student Workers Coalition that submitted a petition to former University President Stuart Rabinowitz in March 2020, prior to the University sending students home due to the pandemic. They demanded that the administration pay student workers the Nassau County minimum wage. However, the petition was never addressed, and the students in the coalition have since graduated. 

This new coalition, known as the Hofstra Student Employee Union, plans to pick up where the former student workers coalition left off. “[Student employees] work so hard for hours upon hours every day, and they’re not being paid a living wage,” Lazo said. “We just think that it’s completely unfair that these people get paid so low for all the work that they do on our campus.”

According to Schuster, the university plans to address the complaints students have made about what they are paid. “In response to student input, the university has been reviewing its current student employment pay structure over the past several months and expects to make adjustments in the fall,” she said.

Although this seems optimistic, it is still unclear if wages will be raised to the Nassau County minimum wage. “As much as every little bit helps, there does come a point where truly we just need at least $15 an hour – which is the bare minimum,” Lazo said.