BY CAPRICE LAWLESS
Organizers do what they can, with what they have, where they are. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic our small community college chapters have been focusing on preserving the faculty majority of adjuncts who are nearly out of their minds with worry over income the next several months. While Colorado is essentially a right-to-work state, our AAUP advocacy chapters have nonetheless laid the groundwork over seven years for events that unfolded yesterday here. We are seeing how our work will be helping ease minds and fill pocketbooks of our deserving adjunct faculty this summer, and possibly beyond. Today we consider how our failed House bill, failed Senate Bill, failed formal response to our governing board, failed unemployment benefits push in 2017-18, and uneven attendance at our events were invisible foundations for some good news we received yesterday. Our current formal AAUP proposal to our college system top brass is still in process and has been exhausting only because we are trying to create so much change. However, as CU Prof. Don Eron of the Colo. Conf. Exec. Committee reminds us repeatedly, organizers are always “failing forward.” Our previous failures should have destroyed us, but instead, they pushed us ahead and kept us together.
The two press releases below show how important it is for AAUPeeps to stay together even when it feels like we are failing. They also remind us to look forward to times ahead, when all this gloom, doom, and Zoom will be behind us.
Our press release April 27, 2020
FRCC Will Allow Adjunct Unemployment Claims Summer 2020
In a welcome change of a previous policy, Front Range Community College will not fight unemployment claims adjunct faculty make next month if their summer classes have been cancelled. They will be able to get unemployment insurance benefits through the Colo. Dept. of Labor and Employment (CDLE). Even more significantly this year, once the adjunct is awarded the claim through the CDLE (typically a fraction of what they would normally earn teaching a course), it will release the $600/week in federal benefits unemployed gig workers such as FRCC adjunct faculty qualify for through the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, part of the CARES Act of 2020.
Front Range Community College employs more than 1,500 adjunct faculty at its campuses in Adams, Boulder, Larimer, and Weld Counties. Hundreds of those adjunct faculty have had their Summer 2020 classes cancelled due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Many of them will take advantage of the summer months to earn online-teaching certification being offered by FRCC. We predict the other colleges in the 13-college Colo. Comm. College System (CCCS) will follow suit in regard to those certifications as well as the unemployment benefits.
The AAUP Chapters of the CCCS have been on the forefront of the push for the CCCS to reconsider its unemployment benefits policy, after having held workshops across the metro area to help adjuncts try to secure benefits previously (see attached press release). Earlier this week, leadership from the Colorado Conference of the AAUP met electronically with colleagues from the New Faculty Majority and Tenure for the Common Good to help contingent/adjunct faculty everywhere secure unemployment due to college closures this pandemic has unleashed. Look for more information on that larger push in weeks to come.
The AAUP Chapters of the CCCS applaud FRCC Pres. Andy Dorsey’s decision to stand by the committed and talented faculty majority who so valiantly carried on their classroom teaching via online learning tools and remote teaching throughout the chaotic and historic Spring 2020 semester.
Our press release April 15, 2020
AAUP distributes GoFundMe Campaign funds to CCCS adjuncts
Because the AAUP Colorado Conference knows firsthand that the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) fights unemployment claims made by its hardworking adjunct faculty, for the 2019-20 Winter Break the AAUP Colo. Conf. launched a national GoFundMe Campaign to collect donations to help its part-time faculty members in the CCCS. The press release about the GoFundMe campaign generated news in the Boulder Daily Camera and a long feature interview on KGNU Radio. The Conference closed that campaign earlier this week. Although the campaign fell short of its goal of $2,000K, donations exceeded $600. Earlier this week, small checks were sent to CCCS part-time faculty who are also AAUP members.
Earlier this month, the AAUP Colo. Conf. wrote letters pleading with CCCS Chancellor Joe Garcia, Colo. Gov. Jared Polis, and several Colorado lawmakers to urge the CCCS to help CCCS adjunct faculty secure unemployment benefits now that the coronavirus is disrupting college enrollments and course schedules. Without the nominal unemployment benefits adjunct faculty could rightly qualify for through the Colo. Dept. of Labor and Employment (CDLE) they will be unable to access the promised $600/week the U.S. Congress has set aside for gig workers such as adjunct faculty whose work has been dramatically slashed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Few in Colorado know how the CCCS makes it all but impossible for its hardworking adjunct faculty to receive any unemployment benefits between semesters. A few adjunct faculty here and there are able to get them because they have someone inside the CCCS who can bend a rule. That sad fact only points to the lack of a fair policy for all.
Recently, the AAUP Colo. Conf. tested CCCS policy for adjunct faculty unemployment. Under the guidance of the National Employment Law Project, and to use the then-new U.S. Dept. of Labor Unemployment Insurance Program Letter 5-17, the Conference hosted unemployment benefits workshops in Denver, Boulder, and Douglas Counties for Winter Break, 2017-18. They researched the issue, published a how-to workbook, and then helped 50 CCCS adjunct faculty apply for unemployment benefits through the CDLE. Of the 50 who applied, all but three were denied the benefit. It was startling to understand how the 63 six-figure-earning CCCS administrators who oversee the 13-college system would not help their adjunct faculty secure the tiny unemployment benefit of $100 to $200/week for teachers whose wages are already so low many qualify for food stamps, subsidized housing, and health care.
The AAUP Colo. Conf. learned how the CCCS does this during the unemployment benefits claim conference-call hearings conducted by the CDLE. During the hearings, AAUP representatives could only serve as silent witnesses. Even so, in them they observed firsthand, in case after case, how the CCCS stacks the deck against any adjunct applying for unemployment benefits. Typically, the earnest and soon-to-be-broke-and-unemployed adjunct faculty has just finished reading all the e-mails from the department chair and the college president that have expressed gratitude for a semester of work well done, and all the notes saying “Thank you for all you do!” Unbeknownst to him/her, on the other end of the CDLE appeal hearing conference call is a tactical force CCCS officials have deployed to cancel out all that gratitude.
On the other end of the line are not only his/her department chair and perhaps a dean, but also a CCCS HR official, and always one of the meanspirited consultants the CCCS hires to argue against paying unemployment benefits. That’s right: three-or-four CCCS officials to fight the one adjunct honestly requesting meager unemployment benefits. In far too many instances, along the way the consultants enjoyed insulting the adjunct faculty. It was not uncommon for the CCCS consultants to make the adjuncts feel like losers for teaching in the CCCS and for having the nerve to request unemployment benefits. In more than one instance, the CDLE referee would then join in questioning the adjunct about his/her motives for teaching and/or seeking unemployment. The hearings grew so ugly that the AAUP Colo. Conf. had to write a letter in January 2018 to the state director of the CDLE and to State Sen. John Kefalas to insist the CCCS and the CDLE call off their dogs.
The AAUP Colo. Conf. recognizes the CCCS is now under new leadership with Chancellor Joe Garcia. Hopes are high that mistakes like those of the past will not be repeated by the CCCS in 2020.
