Adjunct faculty are entitled to unemployment compensation during semester breaks. Even if you are scheduled to teach a course for summer session or the fall semester, you are still eligible for unemployment benefits during your break in teaching because this only constitutes an offer of employment.
Although your personal experience may be that the course(s) you traditionally teach always run, overall, given the nature of community college courses, there is no guarantee that a course you have been offered will run. Therefore adjunct faculty in our system are eligible for unemployment benefits unless other ongoing employment makes them ineligible.
If you have any difficulties in applying for unemployment compensation, contact Joe Rizzo, MCCC DCE Grievance Coordinator by email at Grievance-DCE@mcccunion. org or by phone at (603) 898-6309. MTA will provide an attorney to represent you at the Department of Employment Security.
Adjunct faculty who are required to participate in the state's OBRA Pension are advised to withdraw their money at the end of each semester and put the money into private pension plans.
The OBRA is not the same as a 401k plan, and many financial planners are not aware of its particulars. In short, OBRA contributions are placed into a low rate savings account and, therefore, do not provide any additional financial gain beyond what you as an individual can do by withdrawing the funds and putting it into your own savings account (or better yet pay down higher interest rate loans). You may be told that you are not allowed to withdraw the money, but that is not the fact. When the semester is finished adjunct faculty are no longer employed by the state, and therefore eligible to withdraw their pension contributions. (It is the same reason adjunct faculty are able to collect unemployment benefits over semester breaks.) You can get more information by visiting the MCCC website www.mcccunion. org and clicking on the link under DCE and Part-time. You can also call the fund administrator, ING, at (877) 457-1900 to get more information and to service your account.
As always you should consult a financial planner in making financial decisions. However, be sure that your financial advisor is fully aware of the OBRA policies.