Featured photos by Ethan Schmidt
Story by Ethan Schmidt
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MTSU campus hourly employees remain in the 8.1% minority of education and health workers who get paid on a monthly basis, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While the vast majority of education workers get paid on a biweekly basis, the monthly pay schedule at MTSU makes it difficult for employees to manage their finances throughout the month. Sometimes, new workers have to wait up to six weeks for their first paycheck.
A biweekly pay schedule would alleviate this stress and shorten new workers’ wait for their first paycheck to one month. MTSU President Sidney McPhee has acknowledged the need to change to a biweekly pay schedule, but the administration has made few commitments as to how and when it will make this change.
A delegation of employees in the MTSU United Campus Workers labor union met with President McPhee last October after circulating a petition demanding biweekly pay for all hourly employees, having over 500 signatures at the time. The president suggested a loose timeline of one year for a potential implementation, but a follow-up email sent a month later to MTSU UCW Vice President Spencer O’Neal included no timeline — only the vague assurance that MTSU would “explore processes” to implement biweekly pay.
“Workers here on campus get paid once a month, which is rough, because we get paid around eight to — I believe — the highest student worker pay is 15 [dollars per hour],” MTSU UCW Secretary Ashton Beatty said at a Student Government Association meeting last month.
“It’s harder when your paychecks are further apart,” he said.
The estimated living wage in Rutherford County for one adult working full-time with no children is $23.83 per hour, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator.
Kathy Musselman, MTSU’s human resources assistant vice president, said last month there are two options to implement biweekly pay: Hire more payroll staff and keep the school’s current Banner system — software that can process checks biweekly — or maintain the same number of staff and switch to more efficient paycheck-processing software. Musselman said the option to hire more staff is a hurdle she has not been able to leap since joining the payroll department in 1997.
The administration has multiple ways to make the change, but its lack of communication adds to the stress of MTSU’s workers.
“I work part-time. I work a few jobs, so I can kind of deal with it,” Free Speech Center Social Media Manager Alex Laudeman said.
However, he lives with his boyfriend, Dallas Rogers, who works full-time as a janitor at MTSU.
Rogers earns $14.86 per hour, while Laudeman makes $15 per hour as a part-time worker. The estimated living wage in Rutherford County for two adults who live together and work full-time is $15.65 per hour, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator. Each adult must make that wage to meet their basic needs.
“It’s rough because he might not have the money — because he gets it once a month. So it’s in between those times that he needs to get certain things,” Laudeman said.
“It would be great to be paid more,” janitor Rogers said. “But really, even if they just dished it out to where it was biweekly instead of monthly, I think that that would make a huge difference.”
While hourly workers at MTSU continue to call for biweekly pay, the administration hesitates to commit to its implementation.
Other public Tennessee universities have already made the switch. The University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee and Austin Peay State University all process paychecks for some of their employees on a biweekly basis, UCW Secretary Beatty said.
Memphis’ biweekly pay provides a glimpse into what it might look like if MTSU administration keeps the Banner software and hires more staff. Similar to MTSU, the public university in west Tennessee uses a variant of the Banner software to process paychecks.
“Just because both institutions have Banner does not mean the processing software is equal,” said University of Memphis UCW Vice President Meghan Cullen.
“In many cases, pre-existing contracts with a specific software company prohibit these changes from being made in a timely manner.”
Cullen also said for employees paid biweekly, Memphis deducts benefits from one of the two paychecks per month, rather than dividing those deductions between both checks.
“This results in one paycheck per month being drastically lower than the other,” she said.
Musselman also said Memphis’ payroll department can handle biweekly pay because it employs more staff than MTSU to handle the paycheck processing. Yet, the website for Memphis’ payroll department only lists four employees, while MTSU’s lists five and one vacant position. Memphis’ payroll department verified two weeks ago that all of its employees are listed on its page.
Yvette Clark, vice president of MTSU’s IT Department, said the university is more likely to switch softwares than hire more staff, and it is actively examining new software to replace the existing Banner system.
“The cost for us will be in the $20 million range to just move finance and APM [asset performance management],” she said. “The cost is not insubstantial to move.” She emphasized that the exact costs to switch to a new pay cycle are unknown at this time.
In a meeting with UCW-affiliated MTSU employees, MTSU President McPhee spoke about the delays caused by the current Banner software. He repeatedly stressed that the Banner software was the main bottleneck in paycheck processing, with additional barriers created by limited state funds, the large number of employees at MTSU and long wait times for bank approvals.
Clark, and seemingly MTSU administration, thinks a change in software will be the likely method for implementing biweekly pay.
While higher-ups search for potential software replacements, MTSU workers continue to wait a month for their paychecks that will not pay them a living wage.
Leaders from the United Campus Workers will voice their concerns at the upcoming Board of Trustees meeting on March 19.
Correction, March 20, 2024: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that a follow-up email about the petition was sent to UCW Vice President Spencer O’Neal in December 2023. It has been revised to instead read, “…a follow-up email sent a month later,” meaning November 2023.
Ethan Schmidt is a contributing writer for MTSU Sidelines.
To contact News Editor Alyssa Williams and Assistant News Editor Zoe Naylor, email newseditor@mtsusidelines.com.
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