I have been a student aide at Founders Memorial Library for two years and in that time raises were given periodically based on merit and the amount of time a worker had been at the library.

This has meant that workers were rewarded for their service to the library with a higher pay rate.

At the present time, however, the administration has given the student employee staff a raise that puts the base pay rate at $4.25 per hour.

Everyone is given whatever raise is needed to put them at the $4.25 level regardless of what their pay rate was to begin with.

What this means, in effect, is that workers such as myself who have much experience at the library are given little or no raise while new workers are given a 45 cent raise above the previous $3.80 before they even start working.

If raises in the past have been given on the basis of merit and time served at the library then why now is the current pay raise being given for the opposite?

There are student employees who are being given absolutely nothing because they have already reached a $4.25 pay rate by merit of their long service to the library.

Now they find that they have worked such a long time only to end up at the same level of pay as someone who may not have ever seen the library before.

I am asking that this new policy be reconsidered. NIU President John La Tourette claims the university does not have enough money to give every library employee a 45 cent raise.

I can’t argue with that. But, in that case, couldn’t we all be given perhaps a 25 cent or a 30 cent raise?

The administration is not required to pay minimum wage anyway, so then why not raise the base pay to a little below the $4.25 level while extending the same rate of increase to all employees to make the raise fair to all?

This would ensure that we are all given the same advantage instead of giving some student employees a raise that is totally unproportional to their merit while stiffing those who have worked hard to earn their’s.

Don’t stiff the employees who have been with you the longest.

Matt Barton

Senior

History