IRS goes to bat for adjunct faculty health insurance

This is one of the first things I've heard about how Obamacare will benefit part time faculty. If the Feds actually pursue this angle aggressively, it could take away a lot of the economic benefit for colleges of relying so heavily on part time faculty and maybe make them offer more full time jobs instead.

Maybe.

IRS: Adjunct Faculty Hours Must Be Calculated With 'Reasonable' Method

The Internal Revenue Service put colleges and universities on warning with new proposed rules issued this month, warning them not to skimp when counting the hours adjunct faculty work. The guidelines from the IRS could be critical to ensuring whether part-time college instructors receive health care benefits as new Affordable Care Act laws take effect. 

The IRS noted in the Federal Register that "educational organizations generally do not track the full hours of service of adjunct faculty, but instead compensate adjunct faculty on the basis of credit hours taught." In short, most colleges are only paying part-time instructors for time spent in a classroom, and nothing for time spent grading or preparing. 

The Treasury Department and the IRS are considering and "invite further comment on how best to determine the full-time status of employees" like educators, who may work many hours after students leave the classroom. 

Starting in January 2014, any employee working 30 hours or more per week will be considered a full-time faculty member andwill be entitled to health insurance through an employer under new federal rules, with an exception for certain small businesses. So far, several schools have cut adjuncts' hours to avoid the requirement and save cash. Matt Williams, vice president of New Faculty Majority, a group that advocates for collective bargaining rights of adjunct instructors and professors, told The Huffington Post in November he expects this type of action to happen more often. 

From the Huffington Post

Letter to CA Democratic Leaders on death of single payer healthcare bill

I was deeply disturbed to see how the Senate Democrats handled SB 810, which would have greatly benefited all Californians and likely been wildly popular and beneficial to election prospects of Democrats even further up the ticket and around the country.  

If this had been the first time the bill had made its way through the Senate, failing by 4-6 votes once it got to the floor would have been a respectable if disappointing outcome.  

This wasn't the first time it made it to the floor though.
As you know,nearly identical bills passed both chambers only to be vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger, but with a Democrat as governor, there is a real chance that this could become law.  

If a handful of Democratic senators block this historic opportunity, it will make a lot of us wonder if you guys actually care about average people or only do bold legislation when you know you have a business owned governor who can be depended on to veto it.  

It was also hard not to notice the five and six figure donations from the insurance industry to the handful of Democratic senators who killed the bill by abstaining or voting no along with Republicans.
I can't trust a party that can be bought like that. 

The failure of this vote also undermines our trust in even the reputation of those who voted for it and the Democratic leadership. 

Legislative bodies have a clever trick they do when they need something to pass, but it would hurt some rep with their constituents: they might ''release'' the reps who need to be released once they've rounded up enough other votes to pass it without them
That could also happen when they DON'T want legislation to pass, but want it to look like ''Gosh darn it, we sure TRIED,'' then they ''release'' the reps least likely to be harmed by voting against it (think Joe Lieberman and the US Senate).  

For our current form of government to endure, Democrats need to actually enact Democratic policies when you have the levers of power not simply slow the onslaught of the conservative dismantling of our middle class.  

If you guys can't put some version of SB 810 on Jerry Brown's desk before he leaves office, Democratic voters will be hard put to think of a reason to remember to vote on election day, let alone cast a vote for Democrats.  

You need to post an explanation on your webpage about why this failed, what will be done to discipline those Democrats who refused to vote yes, how soon you will get this on the agenda again, and what you will do differently to actually get it signed by the governor. 

As I was digging around for their contact information, it was striking that SB 810 wasn't mentioned on the homepages of the Democratic Caucus, Speaker, or President Pro Tem, but lots of lesser issues were. 

Add your voice too: 

Democratic Caucus 
http://democrats.senate.ca.gov/contact 

Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg 
http://sd06.senate.ca.gov/contact (online email contact) 
http://sd06.senate.ca.gov/ (address, phone, and fax at bottom of her homepage) 

Senate Majority Leader Ellen M. Corbett 
http://sd10.senate.ca.gov/contact (online email contact) 
http://sd10.senate.ca.gov/ (address, phone, and fax at bottom of her homepage) 

California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton 
1401 21st Street, Suite 200 
Sacramento, CA 95811 
(916) 442-5707 phone 
(916) 442-5715 fax 
john@cadem.org 

As others have noted, the system may be too broken for these guys to be responsive anymore, but we have to let them know this is unacceptable so they can't plead ignorance of our disapproval and be telling the truth.

death of the trash digging professor

Sometimes I think we understate the harm done to us by the abusive and discriminatory adjunct system because we are embarrassed. Few people are comfortable telling the whole world that their checks bounced, their significant other left them because they couldn't get a "real" job, or that they still live in parents' basement at 50. If you can't bring yourself to tell your story, tell this guy's, originally told by Barbara McKenna in AFT on Campus:

Adjunct teacher Marty Slobin’s obituary in the Dec. 12, 2000 edition of the Detroit Free Press is moving for its brevity. It memorializes the lecturer who had received a distinguished teaching award from the University of Michigan-Dearborn just the year before and who also taught at Wayne State University and Henry Ford Community College.

“Words cannot describe what this man does in the classroom,” a former student says.

Outside the classroom, Slobin commuted to his teaching jobs on three campuses by bus because he could not afford to keep a car.

“Marty’s whole life was devoted to his students and his teaching,” says a fellow professor.

Suffering from heart disease, Slobin could not afford the treatment—surgery—because the income he lost during a convalescence would make it impossible for him to keep up his health insurance premium payments.

Slobin had “succeeded in making the study of political science meaningful in the lives of his students,” the paper quotes Bernard Klein, a former interim chancellor of the university.

At one point, the university asked Slobin to stop going through the trash in search of the pop cans he returned to collect their deposit refunds.

“I attended his class on congressional elections earlier this fall,” says the university chancellor, Daniel Little, “and was able to see firsthand the respect and affection his students felt for him.”

Slobin, 55, died on Dec. 6 in his office after a heart attack. He was so poor, says Bonnie Halloran, president of the Lecturers Employee Organization (LEO)/AFT at the University of Michigan, that faculty at Dearborn and the neighboring community college took up a collection to pay for his funeral.

FULL TEXT

If your story isn't as extreme as his, it's probably because you have a job in another industry, a spouse, or some other relative who takes up the slack. Without one of those safety nets, most of us could be this guy.

class action lawsuit got health insurance for PTers in WA state--did it help equal pay bill?

The judge in the health insurance case slammed the legal fiction that we are "temporary" employees even after working in a district for decades:

law firm of Bendich, Stobaugh and Strong, P.C.

The settlement ends a five-year class action lawsuit filed by Eva Mader of Bellevue and Teresa Knudsen of Spokane. They worked more than half-time for 21 and 10 years, respectively. In June 2003, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in favor of the instructors and reversed decisions by the Health Care Authority, the Superior Court, and the Court of Appeals that denied the part-time instructors health care benefits in the summer, even though full-time instructors, who also do not work in the summer, have benefits all year.

The Health Care Authority had said that Mader, who worked for 21 years, was not eligible because she was a “temporary” quarter-to-quarter employee. The Supreme Court ruled that the Authority “must examine the actual work circumstances of a state employee, rather than the contracts or titles under which he or she is employed, to determine whether an employee is eligible for state-paid health benefits.” The Court said, “Twenty-one years is not a temporary position.”

http://www.bs-s.com/ptfhc.htm

This is the kind of thing that should put the fear of God in legislators. They need to know that if they don't end this separate and unequal system, we will seek other remedies. Frankly, I don't see much downside to this, in light of the victories WA got on retirement benefits too, and it probably gives their legislature an incentive to treat the pending equal pay bill seriously since they know a judge may correct their morally and constitutionally defective work if they don't.

Retirement lawsuit in WA state:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/coll04.shtml

Campus Equity Week update from WA state:
http://www.campusequityweek.org/CampusEquityWeek/articles/update-wa.htm

Politicians seem to respond to only one of three things:

1. donations


2. a large number of angry people


3. court orders

The first two have gotten mixed results at best here in California. Maybe the relevant committees in the legislature need to know we are considering this, so they could pre-empt it with legislation, and look like the good guys.





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