Subject:
NY Must Support Better Access to Unemployment Insurance Benefits for Our Adjunct Professors
Message:
Dear Legislator,
As your constituent and someone who cares deeply about public higher education, I strongly urge you to support changes included in the Senate and Assembly one-house budget proposals that will allow adjunct faculty at SUNY, CUNY and the Community Colleges equal access to unemployment insurance benefits.
Federal law allows states to authorize employees at schools and colleges to collect unemployment benefits between academic years, semesters or during extended weeks off, but only when employers do not provide "reasonable assurance" that these workers will be able to return to work after the break.
Educational employers can provide reasonable assurance, under the current standard, simply by sending a letter to their employees or even verbally notifying them that they will have a job when the next term begins. The reality is that the jobs too often are not available due to budget cuts, enrollment declines, academic scheduling changes, and other factors that can affect course offerings and overall staffing.
If reasonable assurances are offered, but the position does not materialize in the next term, these employees will have gone for weeks or months without pay or access to unemployment benefits.
In addition to being patently unfair, this causes recruitment and retention issues and disrupts the continuity of service. The proposal in your one-house budget will require employers to do a better job of notifying their workers of the reasonable assurance standard, ensure that their offers are genuine, prohibit unreasonable contingencies for return to work and specify that pay and other terms and conditions of employment are comparable to the previous position.
Accordingly, I urge you to work with your conference and your leadership to support these provisions and make sure they are included in the enacted budget.
Thank you for considering this important issue. I would respectfully ask that you bring up this issue with your conference.
Sincerely,
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