Affordable Care Act (ACA)
Effective August 16, 2015, Illinois State University began limiting the number of work hours/week to 28 hours for student employees, graduate assistants, civil service extra-help, and other employment types who work 4.5 months or less or are otherwise ineligible for the State's group health insurance benefits under the State of Illinois Group Insurance Act. The work week commences at 12:00 a.m. on Monday and concludes at 11:59 p.m., Sunday.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires all employers with 50 or more full-time employees to provide health insurance coverage to individuals (and their dependent children up to age 26) who work, on average, more than 30 hours per week. Illinois State University has been actively working to comply with the requirements of the ACA for more than two years. We have collaborated with our peers across the state of Illinois to secure an appropriate health insurance vendor to offer coverage to employees who work on average 30 hours per week or more, but who do not meet the eligibility requirements for CMS group insurance under the Group Insurance Act.
Although Human Resources will be monitoring time reporting records on a monthly basis to ensure that affected employees are not averaging more than 28 hours/week, it is also the supervisor and employee's responsibility to proactively manage the hours the employee works. Employees are expected to inform their supervisor(s) if s/he is scheduled to and/or believes s/he may go over the 28 hours/week limit. Every effort should be made to inform supervisor(s) as soon as possible and before going over the limit so that adjustments can be made to keep the average hours under 28 hours/week. Human Resources will be working with the departments to address any overage that may occur and to develop solutions that will work for the department within the guidelines of the restriction.