Posted on 01/24/2013 2:58:12 PM PST by grundle
With about a year left before major portions of the federal health reform law take effect, colleges around the country – including Grand Rapids Community College – are looking for more guidance about how new regulations will affect adjunct instructors.
Specifically, the concern is over a provision in the act treating employees working 30 or more hours a week as full-time, thus requiring employer-assisted health care.
Considering that many in academe “talk more about credit hours and course loads than hours worked, more clarification is needed,” Craig Smith, director of higher education for the American Federation of Teachers, recently told Inside Higher Ed.
A Grand Rapids (Michigan) Community College spokeswoman agreed.
President Steven Ender, during a recent board of trustees meeting, said depending on how the law is implemented, the college could face significant costs associated with providing insurance for adjunct faculty.
The college, as of now, doesn’t offer insurance to its 600 or so adjunct faculty.
Kathy Mullins, executive deputy to the president, said the college is in the process of examining the law and how many adjuncts’ work-load approaches the 30-hour threshold.
She declined to comment further.
Fred van Hartesveldt, president of GRCC’s faculty association, said the number of adjunct faculty who work more than 30 clock hours per week is significant.
“If the health care act looks at clock hours, there will be a lot of adjuncts at over 30 hours a week,” he said. “I’m sure they would love to have health insurance, but I’m sure the college would not want to pay for that. So that’s going to be the issue.”
In a statement, Grand Valley State University spokeswoman Mary Eilleen Lyon said administrators are examining the law but have not taken any actions.
At least two colleges and universities – Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania and Youngstown State University in Ohio – have already created caps on the amount of hours their adjunct faculty teach to avoid fees associated with the affordable care act, according to Inside Higher Ed.
That was a blow to adjuncts because not only does it mean they won’t gain health coverage, it also means lower pay because they’re teaching fewer courses.
I wonder if any of these instructors that are getting their hours cuts are liberals that supported ObamaCare.
Yes, I’d think it would be complicated. Full time faculty might be in the classroom maybe nine hours a week, but they are expected to keep office hours, and they are expected to do research, writing, course preparation, and so forth. So it would probably add up to a 40 hour week in practice.
Adjunct faculty are not considered full-time workers, so you would probably only count classroom hours and required office hours. In most cases that would come to fewer than 30 hours a week, although probably some junior colleges work them harder than that. But you’d need to establish whether, for instance, they should get paid for class preparation, and if so, how long that would be.
Research would not count. If they were writing articles or a book, it would be in hopes of getting a tenured position in the future—which would be full time.
Oh. And you would likely need to establish some estimate of hours needed to grade papers, exams, etc.
Beat me to it...the Commie Muslim who taught agitation as an anti-Constitutional visiting professor would have to jump on Moochelle’s health plan at her imaginary job created for her at U. Chicago Medical Center.
I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t the academics that love Obama so and pushed hard for both his election and his agenda just pony up whatever it takes to cover their troops and soak the students and their parents for a few more bucks in tuition?
If you really want to bug one of these adjuncts, point out to them that McDonalds got a waiver for their employees.
That just shows how valuable non-tenured professors are in Obama's estimation...
Or is that special favor only to be used against evil corporations?
-PJ
The Academented voted for, and gave generously to, Obama.
Let them starve. They can always fight with the trolls for living space under the bridges.
Screw em.
Socialists want equal suffering? Well then, share the pain.
Every group that voted overwhelming for Obama deserves everything they get. Of course they are too stupid to figure it out.
What a bunch of hypocrites. The whole academic bunch voted for Obama; and now they don’t like what that means. Duh!
The IRS released new regulations last week to make it harder for employers to circumvent Obamacare and deny their employees heath insurance. One rule stipulates that “employers could still fall under the mandate if they employ enough part-time workers to equal 50 full-time workers,”
hiurs=hours
So it appears to me that this college will have to provide health insurance or pay the fine, according to this IRS ruling, even if they cut back on the adjunct professors hours?
“That was a blow to adjuncts because not only does it mean they won’t gain health coverage, it also means lower pay because they’re teaching fewer courses.”
I guess it depends on which side of the issue you reside. Personally, anything that perturbs “higher education” in a negative fashion, the better I like it. I used to work with some Ph.D. scientists in private industry. They were all pissed off about the number of hours the company expected them to work, so they were all “threatening” to go back to “academia.” Tells you all you need to know about the situation.
Here we go...amke up the rules as we go along...
To all the LIB-enabling instructors...
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha.
bttt
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