Your state Senator, Carl Kruger, chairs the State Senate Finance Committee. As chair, his support is important to win passage of our bill that would guarantee access of eligible adjuncts to unemployment insurance.

This bill, S. 4123-A, would simply clarify that the current letters of "intent to hire" alone should not be used to deny benefits, and require college employers to document those situations in which an adjunct is truly, not contingently, guaranteed reappointment in the following term.

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

Dear Senator Kruger, I am your constituent and a member of the Professional Staff Congress, the union of faculty and professional staff at CUNY. I am writing to urge you to support S4123-A (Onorato) and to help move this legislation to the Senate floor for a vote. I know of your concern for working people and fairness. This legislation would promote your values by reforming the Unemployment Insurance law to remove an unfair impediment that prevents part-time adjunct college faculty, who are otherwise eligible to receive Unemployment Insurance benefits, from receiving benefits when they are out of work.

S4123-A is designed to end the current practice of allowing letters that colleges send at the end of the semester expressing their "intent to hire" (conditional on enrollment, funding and no program changes in the following term) to be used categorically to establish "reasonable assurance" of future employment, the standard for educational workers under federal Unemployment Insurance law. If an adjunct has a confirmed appointment, he or she would continue to be ineligible for benefits. This bill would simply require college employers to document this confirmation, and clarify that the current letters of "intent to hire" state the conditional nature of the reappointment, and should not be used to deny benefits.

Today's college faculty is largely composed of adjuncts, part-time faculty, who either combine their work as faculty with other jobs or rush from campus to campus piecing together a living. Adjuncts make about $3,000 per course and receive no compensation from their employer between college terms. Adjuncts rarely receive paid time off, health insurance, or retirement benefits. The vast majority of college faculty positions are now either contingent, part-time, or both. Fewer than a third of all college faculty nationwide are in tenured or tenure-track positions.

Most important, adjuncts typically have no guarantee of being rehired for the following semester once the course ends. In this respect, adjunct faculty and other part-time college instructional personnel are similar to seasonal resort workers, construction or entertainment trades workers whose employment is episodic and who receive unemployment benefits between jobs. It is only fair that adjunct faculty have similar access.

But under current New York State law, adjuncts are in a double bind. The "letters of intent" to rehire adjuncts received from the employer make clear that reappointment is contingent on funding, enrollment, and program. These letters provide no assurance of a future position. Indeed, it is often the case that adjuncts are told a day or two before class begins that their assigned class has been canceled or given to someone else to teach.

S4123-A would solve this dilemma by presuming that a conditional "letter of intent" to hire is evidence of the episodic nature of adjunct employment and by placing the burden on college employers to present evidence to overcome this presumption. By instituting a case-by-case review process, the bill would prevent employers from misusing the federal provision to deny benefits to adjunct faculty who otherwise should be eligible.

California and Washington State have solved this problem by clarifying what constitutes "reasonable assurance"; it's time for New York to do the same by passing S4123-A. I hope you will support this bill.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
May 29, 2009