“Oh, fuck no!” Michelle Tovar, a freshman at ASU and an employee of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said in response to a bill passed in the Arizona House of Representatives on Feb. 28 that may cause students to face a wage cut.
House Bill 2523 would allow employers to pay full-time students who work part-time the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour instead of Arizona’s minimum wage of $11 an hour.
The bill creates a new classification of workers: students between the ages of 16 and 22 who attend school full-time, typically defined as taking 12 credits in college or enrolled in high school, and work less than 20 hours per week.
Paul Bender, a law professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law downtown, said he believes the bill is unconstitutional.
“The minimum wage law was passed by voter initiative and legislature is not entitled to repeal such a thing, and it’s only entitled to amend it if the amendments further the purpose of the bill and if the amendment has a three-quarter majority vote in each house,” he said.
HB 2523 was passed 31-29 with all Republican representatives voting yes, but it still needs to go through the Senate and governor to become a law.
Bender said he expects the bill to be shot down in court even if the bill passes the Senate.
“This amendment does not further the purpose of the minimum wage law, so it’s unconstitutional. I don’t know why they’re thinking about it,” he said.
In 2016, Arizona voters passed Proposition 206 to raise the minimum wage incrementally from $8.03 per hour to $12 per hour by 2020. Proponents of the bill argue HB 2523 does not violate Prop. 206 because it creates a whole new classification of workers and would only apply to that group.
Travis Grantham, the Republican representative who sponsored the bill, said at a Feb. 11 committee meeting that the goal was to ease the costs of labor for smaller businesses that could not afford to pay employees the higher minimum wage, thereby increasing the demand for labor.
Representative Grantham did not respond to requests for comment.
Public universities like Arizona State University have not been required to participate in the minimum wage increases, and ASU currently pays 50 cents less than the state’s current minimum.
Herminia Rincon, a spokesperson for ASU, said it would not decrease student wages to fit the federal minimum.
“There is a plan in place to continue increasing that amount to stay in step with the state’s minimum wage,” Rincon said in an email. “The university has no plans to reduce the wage, regardless of what happens with this bill … This entry wage is competitive in the market and fair compensation for the work student employees do.”
Daniel Ines, a senior at ASU who works at a Michael Kors store, said he could “kind of” understand why the bill was proposed but even so he wouldn’t like it.
“I would hate that,” he said, “for the obvious reason that I would want to get paid more.”
Tovar cited financial needs that come with attending a university as a reason for her opposition to the bill.
“I want it to stay $11 because I need money because bills are expensive and college is expensive,” she said.
Contact the reporter at nhthomps@asu.edu.
