ACA Impact on L&S Student Hourly and TE Employees
This document provides information on the impact of Affordable Care Act (ACA) guidelines on hours worked by student hourly (SH) and Temporary Employees (TE).
To avoid ACA penalties, you must ensure your TE and SH employees are not working more than an average of 29.75 hours a week in a 90 day period. This restriction is a rolling 90 days and UW-System is considered one employer.
The following measures are recommended by campus to avoid future penalties:
1. When hiring a SH or TE employee, identify if their working period will be less than 90 days. If the working period will be 90 or more days, limit the hours to average no more than 29.75 hours per week for the entirety of their appointment. If the working period will be less than 90 days, be sure to identify that the employee’s end date will be less than 90 days out.
2. If the position is creating 30 or more hours of work per week for 90 or more days, consider one of the following:
- Hiring two SH or TE employees to cover the workload
- If the work is planned to last at least a year, hire the individual in an ongoing position that offers benefits such as University Staff fixed term finite.
- Receive “seasonal” exemption*.
*Seasonal employees are defined as employees who are hired into a position for which the “customary” annual employment is six months or less. Specifically, “customary” means that, by nature of the position, an employee typically works for a period of six months or less for consecutive calendar years, and that period should begin each calendar year in approximately the same part of the year, such as summer or winter. The job that is being performed must be a job that, due to the nature of the work (and NOT business need), cannot be performed at any other point during the year. For these situations, we can seek the “seasonal” exemption because seasonal employees are not benefit eligible under ACA.
If you have a “seasonal” situation, please submit a request for a seasonal exemption to your HR Associate Director. The request must include duties of the position, approximate dates of seasonal employment and reason that it is seasonal work.
To help monitor hours for Student Hourlies, campus has created an “ACA Student Hours Over 25” query. You can find it in OBIEE under “Workforce Dashboards”.