Changes made in response to a recent federal law are ensuring that graduate assistants can now focus on what they came to Syracuse University to do – concentrate on their studies.

A new federal law passed under the Fair Labor Standards Act on Sept. 5 through the Department of Labor will require Syracuse University to be stricter in its monitoring and recording of the amount of hours graduate assistants put in and limiting the amount of hours they can work to 20 hours per week.

‘We’ve been pretty lax in monitoring and enforcing the policy,’ said Roger Casanova, director of compensation administration for human resources. ‘We’re going to have to be a little bit more strict about that.’

The Department of Labor’s salary level test requirement, which determines whether or not a person is eligible to be paid by a salary or hourly wage, was also raised on Aug. 23 to $455 per week. According to Casanova, this may mean more graduate assistants will be under this level and therefore not eligible to be paid by a salary, which would put them back under the monitoring policy.

If graduate assistants are paid hourly wages, they can be paid overtime for time they put in beyond 20 hours, but those paid on salary cannot be compensated for extra work.

‘It seems unlikely the quality of work done by the graduate assistants will suffer, or that we’ll have to hire more,’ said Casanova of the new policies.

Angela Fitzpatrick, a first-year political science doctoral student and teaching assistant for PSC 121: ‘American National Government and Politics,’ said she thinks that keeping the number of hours graduate assistants can work under control is a good idea.

She said she has not seen the potential for overworking in the political science department, but still feels that studies are first and foremost above anything else.

‘I don’t think I would ever go over 20 hours a week, but if I did I wouldn’t notice it because I am enjoying what I am doing,’ Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick said that enforcing the policy was more critical for TAs in the science departments, because they spend more time in the labs rather than dealing with homework assignments and grading.

Julie Snyder, a biology teaching assistant, said her advisers never let the teaching assistants work more than 20 hours a week.

Snyder said she works about 10 formal hours a week and the rest of her time is allocated for office hours, grading, and planning.

‘Biology TAs do a lot more with leading recitations and running the lab,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think (working more than 20 hours a week) is an issue in this department.’

Published on September 7, 2004 at 12:00 pm