Adjuncts, Blogs and the DOL

or The Curious Coincidence of the Blog on July 20  (with apologies to Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime)

For about 24 hours, earlier this week, many members of the higher ed community across the country mistakenly thought that the Department of Labor (DOL) had publicly declared that colleges and universities in the United States would be investigated for violations of federal employment law in the employment of adjunct and contingent faculty.

A post on the AAUP’s blog Academe quoted a July 15 DOL blog post by David Weil, director of the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the DOL, in which Weil explains the new DOL guidance to help employers understand employee misclassification and why it harms affected workers. However, it turned out that the indictment of higher education for its treatment of adjuncts was not official DOL policy, but rather perceptive commentary that contingent faculty working conditions sure seem to violate federal labor law.

Marty Kich, a tenured professor at Wright State University and the blogger who wrote the misattributed commentary preceding the Weil excerpt, observes in his Academe blog post that he has “no idea whether the Department of Labor guidelines on the misclassification of employees as ‘independent contractors’ would in any way be legally applicable to the exploitation of adjunct faculty, but no one reading those guidelines can fail to recognize that the exploitation of those faculty is the result of the same mindset that has contrived the misclassification.”

Last year, contingent faculty activist (and now NFMF Board member) Lee Kottner had the same thought when reading about the appointment of Weil, who had been professor of economics and the Peter and Deborah Wexler Professor of Management at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and served as co-director of the Transparency Policy Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She drafted a petition addressed to Weil asking that the Wage and Hour Division investigate higher education for violations of FLSA, secured co-sponsors (I was one), and over the last year has collected 11,296 signatures. The petition has been reported on at Inside Higher Ed, PBS, USA Today, and even the blog of Harvard University Press, publisher of Weil’s book The Fissured Workplace.

In a strange coincidence, at probably the same time that the Academe blog post was being published Monday morning, I was attending a talk by Dr. Weil at the Advocates Day program of the Association of Labor Relations Agencies annual conference in Minneapolis. I got a chance to ask about the very topic that, unbeknownst to either of us, Marty Kich was pondering online.

Dr. Weil spoke on the topic of “The Fissured Workplace: Consequences for Employers and Workers.” He addressed (as described in the program summary) “the increasingly complex, diffuse, and precarious employment relationships that now characterize many low-wage jobs” and discussed the history of how the workplace has become “fissured” (I would compare this to what many scholars have described as the “unbundling” of higher ed faculty work). He also discussed how the Wage and Hour Division has approached protecting workers’ rights in this context, including through enforcement strategies to address violations and “increased outreach to workers and their advocates to explain their rights and [to] employers to explain their responsibilities under federal labor law.”

DOL Constraints

Dr. Weil noted that his department has limited resources and only about 1500 investigators to handle millions of complaints that come in every year. Therefore they have to marshal those resources strategically, trying to identify which sectors to target based in part on the extent and pattern of alleged violations, but also noting that often the sectors with the most egregious violations are the ones in which the employees feel least safe about speaking out.

The DOL’s recent clarification of the difference between Independent Contractor and Employee, which is the best-known employee misclassification issue, is meant to ensure that employers are fulfilling their obligations and that workers are protected under the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). When workers are misclassified as Independent Contractors, they do not have access to many important protections, including unemployment compensation, overtime pay, and access to Public Student Loan Forgiveness. As Weil explains in the DOL blog, “Misclassification also generates substantial losses to the federal government and state governments in the form of lower tax revenues, as well as to state unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation funds. It forces workers to pay the entirety of their payroll (FICA) tax. It also tips the scales against all of the employers who play by the rules and undermines the economy.”

Significantly, adjunct faculty are rarely misclassified as Independent Contractors anymore. About ten years ago, a series of legal decisions essentially settled the question on the side of employee status, to adjuncts’ benefit. (Adjuncts who may currently be misclassified as Independent Contractors can request a determination by the IRS by filing Form SS-8.) The real misclassification issue for adjuncts now is around exempt (salaried) vs. non-exempt (hourly) status, and around further exceptions within exempt status. With the changes to adjunct employment practices wrought by institutions’ efforts to avoid the Employer Mandate of the ACA, adjuncts are now increasingly being treated like hourly employees without having the associated benefits of that status, like access to overtime pay and protection from wage theft. So adjuncts are caught between a rock and a hard place: receiving only a few of the necessary protections of exempt status (like recognition of professional autonomy), none of the protections of non-exempt status, and all of the vulnerabilities of both. (More on this problem in Part 2 of this post.)

During the public Q&A after Dr. Weil’s talk, I was able to introduce myself and NFM and to ask the central question of the petition: how can WHD address the problem of contingent faculty—especially part-timers and those with difficult access to collective bargaining—falling through the cracks of the FLSA and experiencing what are essentially, if not technically, violations of the FLSA? I asked what, in addition to organizing and collective bargaining, contingent faculty can do to help WHD address this problem.

Dr. Weil responded that the answer is “embedded in the question.” The DOL is bound by the statutory constraints of the law, he explained, so organizations like NFM are essential to helping DOL and the public understand when and why laws are not working, and to ensuring that necessary changes take place.

One Issue, Many Fronts

I took Dr. Weil’s response as an acknowledgment of the importance of the education, advocacy, and organizing in which NFM and other groups and activists engage. Only we can explain clearly how existing labor law’s treatment of adjunct and contingent faculty is based on faulty understanding of, and incorrect assumptions about, our work, who we are as workers, and the way that the sector has changed over the last forty years. We have to organize ourselves even more effectively to make sure our voices are heard, and we have to tell our leaders precisely what changes we want to see in existing legislation, and what new legislation might be necessary.

In January 2013 I made this point to the MLA in my presentation on the presidential panel, calling on the MLA, as a disciplinary organization which focuses on language, to help correct the language that is used to prevent contingent faculty from gaining access to legal rights and protection in laws like the FLSA. Similarly, in November 2014, Adjunct Action examined potential wage and hour violations in contingent faculty work and called for changes to federal labor law in its publication Crisis at the Boiling Point. And of course, 11,296 people who signed Lee’s petition have specifically asked for DOL’s help in figuring out how both the letter and the spirit of the law are currently being violated.

What Next?

Here’s what NFM will do. In coalition with other groups and activists, we will follow up with the DOL regarding contingent faculty and FLSA. We would like to find out for sure what is possible to address through FLSA and what cannot be done without enacting statutory changes. Where statutory changes are needed, we will continue educating and engaging with legislators, agencies, and advocates. And in the meantime we will continue to support contingent faculty organizing and advocacy at all levels.

This will not be the first time we have engaged with federal agencies on issues central to contingent faculty working conditions. For those who may not be aware, here are two other DOL-related projects NFM has been working on:

• Leading the coalition of unions and organizations that is requesting a new guidance letter from DOL to clarify to the states that “reasonable assurance of continued employment”—the standard that prevents contingent faculty from collecting the unemployment compensation that is their due—does NOT in fact apply to contingent faculty and that therefore contingent faculty should not be denied this basic right. (See more here.)

• Educating faculty about the right to unemployment compensation as long as contingent faculty do not have authentic contracts; supporting them in the application process and collecting data about the inconsistent judgments that take place around the country and result in contingent faculty experiencing exacerbated periods of economic hardship during the summer and winter breaks. (See the Unemployment for Adjuncts website.

• Correcting Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) public information about the nature of higher education faculty work.

In 2013 we also spoke to the IRS about proposed rule changes to the section of the ACA known as the Employer Mandate. Working with unions and activists, we helped stop the juggernaut of college and university lobbyists who might otherwise have forced through a bright line standard for defining the average adjunct work week by crediting only one hour of out-of-class work for every hour an adjunct spends in class. While the final rules result was not ideal, it does present an opportunity for further correction of the way that adjunct faculty work is understood in federal law. (And has already been bargained higher in some contracts in Massachusetts.)

Similarly, we have called on the Department of Education to require disclosure of adjunct faculty numbers and working conditions to potential students and the public, something which will be much easier if funding is restored to the National Center for Education Statistics so that it can collect accurate information about the majority of the faculty. We continue to be in touch with the House Education and Workforce Committee about these and other topics. (I was asked to testify on adjunct working conditions before this committee in November 2013, and this led to the production of the report “The Just-in-Time Professor.”)

In our next post on this topic, we will discuss some of the specifics of FLSA and some ideas for how to amend it so that its protections are more properly extended to adjunct and contingent faculty.

Postscript: Dr. Weil had to leave the conference immediately after his talk, so I could not deliver Lee’s petition to him personally; however I was able to give it to one of his colleagues to pass on to him.

–Maria Maisto

Please watch our web site, Facebook and Twitter (@NewFacMajority) for continuing information. And please consider supporting NFM’s work by becoming a member or by making a fully tax-deductible donation to the NFM Foundation.

Legislation Watch

This is the first of an occasional column highlighting local, state, and federal legislation and legal cases affecting Higher Ed. If you’re aware of specific legislation in your area, please submit tips to us. We also welcome more in-depth analyses of specific bills or policy changes.

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A number of conservative attempts to modify higher education’s inner workings have been offered in various states in the last six months, but most have either not been taken up or died a grisly death. Among the most infamous were North Carolina State Sen. Tom McInnis’s  Senate Bill 593, and Senator Mark Chelgren’s bill (Iowa) which increased the number of classes all professors would be required to teach, and allowed students to “vote their least favorite professors off the academic island” regardless of tenure, respectively. Both show an obvious lack of knowledge about how higher education works, and a desire to have greater “managerial” control over the ideas and  knowledge—in short, the work—produced in colleges and universities. Though these two bills have been tabled, they remain “in play” in that they may become zombie bills resurrected in the next session. We’ll keep an eye peeled.

The really big news for academic unions is the Supreme Court taking up Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. This case has public service unions, including academic unions, holding their collective breath. At issue is whether public sector unions can require “agency fees” from non-members to help finance union work. “If the Supreme Court rules that ‘fair share’ violates the First Amendment rights of public employees, they would transform the entire public sector into right to work, more appropriately named ‘right to freeload,’” said Rudy Fichtenbaum, a professor of economics at Wright State University and national president of the American Association of University Professors,” in an article in Inside Higher Ed. The Atlantic has a good run-down of the history and analysis of Samuel Alito’s role and likely vote in this case. Some academic union locals are already stepping up the effort to convert agency fee payers to full members.

Meanwhile, the big news for community colleges is the new bill first hinted at by President Obama in January and now actually proposed by House Democrats (PDF) but as yet untitled, making funds available for states to offer free tuition at community colleges. This is legislation that adjuncts should be especially concerned with because there are no provisions for funding more full-time faculty, or even an acknowledgement of the fact that we do most of the teaching at CCs; there is, in fact, no mention of faculty at all. But there is a great deal of reliance on metrics and outcomes to continue the funding, and calls for “providing comprehensive academic and student support services, including mentoring and advising, especially for low-income, first generation, adult, and other underrepresented students.” Unless adjuncts make it clear who should be doing the advising and mentoring, those jobs will got to even more administrators—or worse, overburden the administrators already doing that job.

Wisconsin’s new proposed state budget has just come down the pike with some devastating consequences for public education and Higher Ed. We’ve already heard about the $250M cut to the University of Wisconsin system and the negation of shared governance and tenure. ABC’s local affiliate’s blog has a concise summary of the major provisions of the budget, but here’s one of the scarier non-monetary parts of the Wisconsin budget, aside from the part that kills shared governance and laughs at tenure:

OPEN RECORDS

All 132 members of the Legislature, their staff and those who work for legislative support agencies would be able to shield nearly all their communications and work material from the open records law. Currently available material, like bill drafts, would be kept secret. Nearly all records created by all other state and local government officials would be exempted from the records law as well.

Note: This provision was withdrawn shortly after the initial budget was released (on July 4th, appropriately enough) with the following explanation: “The intended policy goal of these changes was to provide a reasonable solution to protect constituents’ privacy and to encourage a deliberative process between elected officials and their staff in developing policy. It was never intended to inhibit transparent government in any way.” We’ll leave it here just to make people aware of the political climate in Wisconsin, in case you weren’t already sure which way it’s heading.

By contrast, Oregon is about to vote on a $14M increase to Oregon State‘s budget, which will allow them to hire new faculty and expand programs. Not only that, but they’ve beaten the Federal law to the punch and are already making community college free. Yay, Oregon (and Tennessee)!

For something truly precedent setting, we look to Massachusetts, which is making a major effort to hire more faculty, and not just adjunct faculty. “Legislation sponsored by Rep. Paul Mark, a Peru Democrat, would require public higher education institutions to increase fulltime faculty so that by 2021 three quarters of substantial undergraduate courses on each campus are taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty. The bill (H 1055) would also tie adjunct faculty pay to a prorated amount of what fulltime faculty make.” Needless to say, this would be a godsend for adjuncts.

After a long, major campaign (that included some hard-hitting radio ads), CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress, which has been without a contract for five years, got their budget that proposes 20% raises (mostly for tenure-track faculty and not retroactive) past the state senate. Gov. Cuomo, however, is Not Amused and has not yet signed it. Students won’t be either, since higher tuition is also part of the package. And adjuncts? “The PSC has historically negotiated within the annual salary amounts for equity increases for certain lower-paid positions, such as College Laboratory Technician and Adjunct Lecturer, or for additional amounts applied to top salary steps; we reserved the right to negotiate similar equity increases in this round.” Maybe PSC will negotiate the same kind of equitable distribution of raises practiced in California, with higher raises going to those at the lower, adjunct end of the wage scale.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced on June 30th that as many as 5 million employees will now be eligible for overtime pay—except for “learned professionals,” which is basically college professors of just about any sort. Here’s a summary of that exemption:

Learned Professional Exemption

To qualify for the learned professional employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:

• The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week;
• The employee’s primary duty must be the performance of work requiring advanced knowledge, defined as work which is predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment;
• The advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning; and
• The advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.

Without that exemption, there might be some hope adjuncts could make a case for work done outside the classroom when we’re paid by the credit hour.

BUT, in a potentially important and possibly precedent setting move, Massachusetts adjuncts can now earn sick time calculated by a 60% higher out-of-class to in-class work ratio than the previous IRS numbers. “Following extensive conversations with representatives of SEIU Local 509’s FacultyForward initiative, the Attorney General’s Office promulgated regulations that account for two hours of course planning and follow-up outside the classroom for every hour spent on in-class instruction – a 60% increase over existing IRS rules governing “shared responsibility” under the ACA. The new rules take steps toward acknowledging the true workload of contingent faculty, allowing them to accumulate time to care for their families’ health without loss of compensation or other course-scheduling repercussions.”

On the same note, we’ll close with Connecticut’s newly passed wage theft law that requires employers to double what they’ve stolen when repaying lost wages. Think how rich we’d all be.

–Lee Kottner

 

COCAL Updates

by Joe Berry
joeberry@igc.org

COCAL is the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a nearly 20 year old network of contingent activists and their organizations that does a conference (now tri national – USA, CAN, MEX) every other year, usually in August. It also sponsors a listserv, called ADJ-L, and has an International Advisory Committee and a website www.cocalinternational.org and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/COCALInternational.

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CCSF STRUGGLE NEWS

1. A Teaching moment: will Sacramento school college accreditors (ACCJC)?

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INTERNATIONAL

1. Precarious work dominates higher education in Ireland.

2. Precarious faculty in Australia need more security.

3. UK faculty open letter about deterioration of conditions for teachers and students in higher ed there.

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UPDATES AND LINKS

1. Job opening, Data Center, Oakland, CA, Director of community driven research.

2. Happy 80th Birthday, NLRA.

3. Lessons of a megalomaniac college president (Gordon Gee of Ohio State.)

4. From comp lit to adjuncts’ champion, the odyssey of Maria Maisto (this is the one of the articles originally commissioned for AAUP mag, Academe, and which was then rejected at the last minute after being fully edited by Academe.

5. Instructors scarce at KY St.

6. Community organizing jobs in NYC and here; and here; and here; and here; and here; and here; and the NY Hotel Trades council also seeks organizers.

7. Park Point U (Pittsburgh, PA) lays off 32 workers, with no word to new adjunct union. Could this be retaliation for having the temerity to organize?

8. NLRB rules that USPS violated law when signing privatization deal with Staples without negotiations with American Postal Workers Union.

9. For SF Bay Area readers: Fighting the Just in Time Professor: a Report from  the Bay Area Metro Organizing Strategy. Part of the month-long celebration of LaborFest.   Sat. July 18, Oakland, CA.  2:00 – 3:30 PM (Free), Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library – 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland

The dirty secret about higher education is that about two thirds of the faculty are part-time or full-time temporary adjunct professors hired by the class or semester. In the past few years, adjuncts have been organizing, striking and unionizing in record numbers. Many of them are using a new strategy known as the Metro Organizing Strategy, which organizes across a geographic region rather than campus by campus, where non faculty is included. Join a critical discussion about these organizing campaigns.

Robert Ovetz, Ph.D. is a migrant mindworker of academia who teaches at three Bay Area colleges and universities. He writes about the changing division of academic labor and strategies for resistance.

Jessica Beard is a lecturer in English and Critical Theory at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute. She teaches in the METRO program at SFSU–a joint effort by CCSF and SFSU for first generation college students of color in the Bay Area.

Jessica Lawless was an adjunct professor in the arts and humanities for 9 years. Organizer with SEIU local 1021’s Adjunct Action campaign.

Gifford Hartman has worked in adult education for over two decades, mostly in literacy and English as a Second Language (ESL). He also participates in Labor History events, writing and talking about the history of class struggle. In 2008, he was part of a 4-day strike at a non-profit ESL school in San Francisco.

For more info: rfovetz@riseup.net

10. Union (TNG-CWA) victory at SF Bay Area for-profit ESL school, the multi-national St Giles:

Hey guys,

Good news for you all. Today our vote was held, and with a vote of 76% we now have a UNION!!! Thank you both so much for all your support. You guys really got the wheels turning for us, and we wouldn’t be here without your support.Thanks again!

-Tanner

11. “The Teaching Class,” an essay well worth your time, about us. Too bad it has nothing to say about how to change stuff, like organizing.

12. Adjunct Commuter Weekly, new publication about to launch. Donate to help and subscribe.

13. New report on the Georgetown U unionization effort.

14. Scott Walker’s budget undermines all public education, from Bob Peterson, former Milwaukee teachers union president.

15. The Arne Duncan era has not been good for students: Diane Ravitch.

16. Contingent faculty are not working in the minors.

17. New book of interest: Academic Repression: Reflections from the -industrial complex.

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NOTE: As noted previously, your COCAL UPDATES editor (Joe Berry) and his spouse/partner/colleague Helena Worthen, are going to teach labor studies in Viet Nam for the fall 2015 Semester. We would like to take some gifts related to the union/workers movement in the US to give to folks there. We are leaving from CA August 14. If any of you would like to have us take union or other movement hats, T-shirts or similar union gifts to VN from your organization as a gesture of solidarity for their labor movement and as a gesture of support for us, please send them to us at 21 San Mateo Road, Berkeley, CA 94707 so that we receive it by August 13, 2015. Unions in Viet Nam are grappling with how to deal with the influx of foreign (capitalist) direct investment there and the need to build local unions that can effectively fight for workers in this new context. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

COCAL Updates

by Joe Berry
joeberry@igc.org
21 San Mateo Road,
Berkeley, CA 94707

COCAL is the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a nearly 20 year old network of contingent activists and their organizations that does a conference (now tri national – USA, CAN, MEX) every other year, usually in August. It also sponsors a listserv, called ADJ-L, and has an International Advisory Committee and a website www.cocalinternational.org and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/COCALInternational.

NOTE: As noted previously, your COCAL UPDATES editor (Joe Berry) and his spouse/partner/colleague Helena Worthen, are going to teach labor studies in Viet Nam for the fall 2015 Semester. We would like to take some gifts related to the union/workers movement in the US to give to folks there. We are leaving from CA August 14. If any of you would like to have us take union or other movement hats, T-shirts or similar union gifts to VN from your organization as a gesture of solidarity for their labor movement and as a gesture of support for us, please send them to us at the address above so that we receive it by August 13, 2015. Unions in Viet Nam are grappling with how to deal with the influx of foreign (capitalist) direct investment there and the need to build local unions that can effectively fight for workers in this new context. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

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CCSF STRUGGLE NEWS
1. Accreditor, ACCJC, unfair and rife with conflict.

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INTERNATIONAL

1. Education International report: EDU businesses pose threat to education.

2. Academics unhappy in Ireland.

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UPDATES AND LINKS

1. More on Friedrichs v CTA (agency fee case in CA).

2. The pernicious effect of corporate influence.

3. Tuition rollback in WA.

4. More true stories on Precaricorps, “I used to be an adjunct …” and check others stories there too.

5. Campus diversity efforts ignore widest gulf – class.

6. All faculty deserve academic freedom, not just the few with tenure.

7. Right to work means right to freeload …

…and is an attack on free speech.

8. Adjuncting is the kiss of death (Actually there is some real research on this. In the book “Contingent Work“, <>  the chapter “Working for piece rates and accumulating deficits” Kathleen Barker and Kathleen Christainsen, eds.. It clearly showed, through blind survey research of hiring officers, that more than 2-3 years as a a contingent becomes detriment, not “experience”.)

9. Another company converts workers from 1099 contractors to full employees.

10. MA adjuncts to get sick leave benefits.

11. National adjunct labor action

12. As a CUNY adjunct I make less in my career than my colleague Paul Krugman makes in a year
http://qz.com/443857/as-a-cuny-adjunct-ill-make-less-in-my-career-than-my-coworker-paul-krugman-makes-in-a-year/

13. IL Valley CC adjuncts.

14. With new overtime rule, Obama may have given 5 million people a raise.

15. Keene State College (NH) unionizing.

16. On the 80th birthday of the Wagner Act (NLRA) is it time lessen the burden on this law?

17. Interesting piece on Social Security and the offsets some of us in 13 states suffer if we also get a state pension. Of especial interest in CA, but also elsewhere and the basis of why this perhaps should be a national issue. The author is also an officer in the new AFT national contingent faculty caucus. She originally wrote this for the CPFA list serve (CA Part-time Faculty Assoc.) , which is a group advocating for PT faculty in the CA community colleges (where all pters are contingent and nearly all FTers are tenured or tenure track).

Dear List,

I was stunned to visit the social security office yesterday and learn that “because of” my tiny $790 CalStrs monthly pension, my tiny $890 social security check would be cut in half (to around $450), in accordance with the Windfall Elimination Provision).

Yes, that is correct, my retirement just went down from a dogfood level of  $1720 a month (plus supplemental of $350 for 5 years) to a nutri-loaf  level of somewhere around $1220 a  month (plus supplemental of $350 for five years) .  For those of you unfamiliar with nutri-loaf–private prisons use nutri-loaf as a disciplinary tactic: curse a guard who taunts  you,  and you get a week of nutri loaf (sawdust, vitamins and protein powder). It costs about 28 cents a serving and meets federal nutrition guidelines ). Presto! They “save” money on food under cover of a “disciplinary” technique that they are permitted by law to use.

Had I stayed in social security, my retirement would be somewhere around $1900-2200 per month!  If I die young (that is under 72), the Calstrs route is still slightly better, because of my “overwork” –that is working  at three districts, for about an extra .5 FTE load, for around 8 years. If not, the $413 loss ($5000 a year)  will begin to erode the benefits of the marginally more “generous” Callstrs system, after age 75.

Yes, that is right, I just lost, as one of the lowest wage workers in the United States, an additional $413/month for life! (the maximum amount a social security benefit can be reduced as an “offset” for my “windfall” of about $1220 a month from Calstrs (for 5 years) and  $860 thereafter.

Though there is no way (that I can think of)  to prepare, game, or to offset this “offset”, I thought I might warn others nearing retirement of how it works!  No one told me, in all the years that I have asked about  the effect of the WEP, in general, and in fact I was counseled to “not worry”–that it would be a very small loss.  Well, folks.  It is time to worry! the WEP constitutes a 24% loss to one of the lowest retirement benefis of any worker in America, for those CA CC PT faculty who have not taught in the CC system their entire working lives!

Here’s the details:  if you do not have 30 years of “significant” employment you will get an offset of your social security check ( the table goes from a modest offset that will leave you with 90% of your “deserved” SS benefits down to only 40%).  I had only 17 or 18 years of significant employment, because a number of years of my work as a higher education faculty were “under” the significant threshold, and six years I was unemployed and raising children.

Women (or any parent) who takes any years off their work-life for family duties, or are underemployed in states where adjuncts routinely earn “under” what the SS office considers significant, will virtually all trigger a social security reduction.  Women are thus (no surprise there)  the big losers in this scheme, that was enacted in the  1990s  (coinciding with the steepest rise of the adjunct numbers)  and meant to rein in  those trying to boost their pensions by working two tracks.

Here is a sample of “significant’ employment thresholds: 1991 is $9,900.   2000 it was $14,175.

In the United States at large, the average earnings of PTF, even those working the equivalent of a FT load, were typically just under the “significant earnings” threshold, or some years, just above.

Who will this effect:  Any Part-time Faculty  who is relying on social security for part of their retirement–ie anyone who worked 1-30 years in another job, other than the California CC system, and expects –has been expecting– to receive their modest social security check!  The offsets are shocking and even the SS employee  looking at my numbers was apologetic and a bit  perplexed.  He kept saying: you were a college teacher for 26 years????. My partner, a lawyer who worked for the NY controllers office and worked with the pension system there before his retirement, and who accompanied me to the visit, was absolutely astonished.  He kept saying, but this is so unfair!  Are you sure?

Again: Below 20  years of “significant” earnings, the worker can only keep 40% of their social security check (or a maximum of $413 in 2015–adjusted yearly).   27 years of “significant employment” permits you to keep 75% of your calculated SS benefits!, 25 years of significant employment allows you to keep 65%  and it goes down (the SS benefit that is not “offset”  by a reduction) precipitously.  With 20 years of “significant’ earnings for which you paid into social security system,  you either loose 60% of your SS benefits or the maximum ($413 in 2015).

Who this will NOT effect: Those PTF who have been working in the CA CC system for most of their working life.  That means their retirement, whatever it is,  will be  “intact”–that is they will  receive the Calstrs formula retirement, and they will not have any social security check at all–presumably a slightly to moderately better deal than SS!

As far as I can see there is no possible  remedy for this except for me to work a 1.5 load for  3 or 4 more years, past my “full retirement age”–in order to “make up” the $413 loss of SS benefits.

But as we at CPFA and around the state work on raising the “cap” to 85 or 90% (and work on mechanisms to assure a roadmap to full per course/per hour parity at the state level) at least the impoverished elderly  might have the minor benefit of just having to work at one district in their aging years to backfill the “offset” that SS applies!   According to the datamart, the largest group of “over 65” employees in the state system are Temporary Academic  employees, and the largest number of part time faculty are now in the over 50 group–so this retirement indignity will be occasioning a chorus of new outrage in the coming years.

It is gravely unfortunate that we were not ahead of this flush budget year and that we did not spend the last year lobbying to boost our cap or our parity pay.  The WEP provision has the capacity for a great many PTF to loose almost 1/4 of their lifetime retirement benefits.  For a twenty year retirement, that constitutes another $100,000 loss to put on top of the stack of losses  (nationwide, around $1,000,000 loss of pay and $750,000 loss of benefits) throughout our working careers in higher education!

We need to move more forcefully next year to get in place more protections and to educate legislators and our own unions about factors that affect our retirement.  I would think that we would also want to work on an overload cap for FTF, alongside pushing for an increase in the PTF cap to 90%.  Can we work on this sort of legislation this year?

It’s too late for me, but there are somewhere around 7,000-10,000 PTF nearing retirement in the next decade or so, who need to understand the Windfall Elimination Provisions and who need to have the opportunity to try to offset the offset by working more, ideally at one college, for a fair wage.  That is currently not the option at most colleges, and because of the statutory limit on load.

Does anyone know how we can figure out the number of  “nearing retirement PTF” who are relying on SS benefits from previous work as adjuncts in other states or in other sectors in CA?  How would I go about trying to get that data?  Let’s just take the El Chorro folks. Who is expecting to earn SS benefits?

Margaret Hanzimanolis

18. Interesting paper on the history of tenure, given at the AAUP annual meeting/conference in DC in June.

It was good to meet you yesterday. My paper from the panel is attached. Please feel free to share it. I put a note on top to explain that it contains no notes or references.

Since you had expressed interest regarding my book, you can find more information about it here:
Best,
–Joerg
Hans-Joerg Tiede, PhD
Professor and Chair of Computer Science
mail: Illinois Wesleyan University
Department of Computer Science
P.O. Box 2900
Bloomington, IL, 61702-2900
U.S.A.
phone:  +1 309 556-3666
fax:    +1 309 556-3864
e-mail: htiede@iwu.edu
www:   http://www.iwu.edu/~htiede

19. New from Notes from the Academic Underground, (Barry Greer) some suggestions for summer reading for radical adjuncts:

The prologue and first 13 chapters are online for “Kill the English Department” at campusreports dot com.  Kindle publication is scheduled for this October.  The soft cover edition will see print shortly thereafter.

Chapters are linked at the top of each page and in the right column should you decide that further reading is necessary.  Each person to correctly identify all literary allusions wins a free soft cover copy of the completed text.

Have a fun summer of deconstruction.

Barry Roberts Greer
barryrobertsgreer dot com
“Notes from the Academic Underground”

20. Union County College (NJ) responds to adjunct complaints.

21. Salon staff to unionize with Writers Guild-East..

22. Culture isn’t free. This article on artists and musicians could apply to contingent academics too.

23. Greek vote on on permanent austerity. This is too important to ignore and it raises the issue of whether we in the US should get to vote directly on a things like TPP(or war for that matter). One of the first victims of austerity all over the world has been education.

24. Ohio U student workers demand a union (AFSCME).

25. Why labor moved left.

26. Protest arrest of Iranian teacher union leader.

COCAL Updates

by Joe Berry
joeberry@igc.org

COCAL is the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a nearly 20 year old network of contingent activists and their organizations that does a conference (now tri national – USA, CAN, MEX) every other year, usually in August. It also sponsors a listserv, called ADJ-L, and has an International Advisory Committee and a website www.cocalinternational.org and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/COCALInternational.

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CCSF STRUGGLE NEWS

1. CCSF Board of Trustees votes against holding ACCJC accountable.

2. Call to action of accreditors nationally.

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INTERNATIONAL

1. Teachers protesting around the world.

2. Non tenured staff strike at Hebrew U in Israel.

3. London further education colleges hit by 7 strikes.

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UPDATES AND LINKS

1. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) Student Labor Movement Gala and retreat in DC Aug 7, 2015.

For the second summer in a row, USAS is holding two special events in Washington, DC for our supporters and alumni, and you?re invited.

On August 7, join us for our second annual Student Labor Movement Gala, a celebration of the incredible work students from across the country have accomplished like winning $15/hour on campus at the UW Seattle, forcing The Children?s Place, a massive apparel conglomerate, to pay $2.5 million to victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, and spreading adjunct organizing like wildfire across the country. The Gala will bring together students, USAS alumni, allies from other social justice movements, and you.

Save the date and buy your ticket now for the 2014 Student Labor Movement Gala in Washington, DC.

And don’t forget the USAS Alumni and Allies Association 2nd Annual Retreat, Saturday, August 8, 2015!

2. Note from Editor:  Is any one in close contact with the Bernie Sanders Campaign? He might well be receptive to being approached about contingent higher ed faculty issues in a broader context of higher ed and education generally. I live in VT part-time and might be able to gain some contacts, but others should try as well. A well written letter from NFM and other groups might be effective right now. [Note from NFM: Great suggestion, Joe. Please note this is Joe’s suggestion not as an NFM Foundation board member but as an individual and that NFM is prohibited from political partisanship by its status as a non-profit, but that we’re working on outreach to and the education of all candidates.]

3. Chicago charter school students say UNO (union) teacher was fired for union activism.

4. Unemployment questionnaire from IL and good commentary on it.

5. I am an adjunct professor—who learns less than a pet sitter (from Philly)

6. NJ adjuncts vent frustration.

7. Involuntary part-time work, here to stay?

8. On selling out, a semi-manifesto.

9. Making space for young workers in unions.

10. Adjuncts deserve job security.

11. St Mary’s College (Oakland, CA) faculty win UI protection in first contract.

12. Arizona State admin backs off on more work for less pay for writing instructors, after protests.

13. Adjunct faculty in North Carolina have joined the Moral Monday movement.

14. Call for a national adjunct labor action Sept 7, 2016  (What about Campus Equity Week at end of October?)

15. Statement on contingent workers from US DOL.

16. My experience as an adjunct in a for-profit c college.

17. Sign petition to expand overtime coverage to many more workers (maybe even us?)

18. Columbia U becomes first university to divest from prisons.

19. Adjunct retirement insecurity (a new study).

20. Monroe CC (Rochester, NY) contract talks deadlocked, partly over adjunct pay

21. Bernie Sanders is doing a petition for single payer-Medicare for all.

22. Labor for Bernie letter to sign.

23. Feminist reflections (blog) life as a sometimes adjunct.