Respect. Visibility. Security. Adjunct Action unites professors at campuses across the country to build power and change the broken systems. On October 28, SEIU Associate General Counsel Maryann Parker and Adjunct Action Policy Director Steve Hill brought one element of the broken system to the attention of the U.S. Department of Labor.
They were joined by New Faculty Majority’s Maria Maisto and representatives of the other unions that represent adjunct faculty to meet with Portia Wu, the newly confirmed Assistant Secretary who oversees the Unemployment Insurance program. Together, we offered a solution to one long-standing problem that plagues adjuncts: clear access to unemployment insurance.
The Department of Labor last issued guidance on the eligibility of education workers for unemployment insurance in 1986—nearly 30 years ago. This was before the adjunctification of higher education; before there were more than one million contingent faculty; before the majority of professors experienced job insecurity from semester to semester.
Not surprisingly, those rules issued in 1986 are completely silent on the eligibility for unemployment benefits of adjuncts and other contingent faculty.
We came armed with your stories. The adjunct professor from Boston who has lost classes in each of the last three years when they were transferred to a full-time professor who needed the full course load. The adjunct professor from St. Louis who doesn’t receive a contract until after the semester begins. The community college professor who doesn’t know until the last days whether a class will meet the enrollment requirements. The adjunct professor from Ohio who received unemployment insurance in 2013, but in the exact same circumstances was denied in 2014.
They listened, and were shocked to learn of the realities of uncertainty that you experience behind the ivory towers.
There is more work to be done. One meeting does not change nearly 30 years of inaction and invisibility. But now they know, and we won’t stop. Read the letter to Department of Labor Assistant Secretary Wu here.
