After nearly two years of bargaining, Management’s wage offer is 0% the first year, 1% the second! This doesn’t even keep pace with inflation.
MCCC represents 4500 adjunct faculty who teach in the Division of Continuing Education (DCE).
- In Massachusetts community colleges, 70% of the courses are DCE.
- Adjunct instructors hired to teach courses in DCE do so on a semester-by-semester basis, with little job security.
We Want Equal Pay for Equal Work
- Adjuncts earn less than half of what fulltime faculty are paid, for teaching the same courses.
- The current starting pay is just over $1000/credit hour ($3200 per course/semester).
- An average community college adjunct earns under $25,000 per year.
- Many adjuncts are forced to teach at multiple colleges in order to cobble together a living wage.
- Adjuncts receive NO BENEFITS — no health care insurance through the GIC and no employer contributions to their retirement savings. As public sector employees, they are prevented from paying into Social Security and receive no Social Security retirement benefits.
- Because adjunct faculty are deeply committed to students, most offer office hours to their students, and participate in college service that benefits students. But they receive NO PAY for this work.
- MCCC is part of a national movement to win pay parity, job security, and full inclusion in academic life.
The MCCC DCE union has been bargaining with the Board of Higher Education since October 2016.
The contract has been extended several times, and it is now slated to expire on 6/30/2018.
- The MCCC and BHE are currently in contract mediation, with a state mediator assisting the parties.
- The DCE bargaining team is seeking a path to pay parity with fulltime faculty (MCCC “Day” bargaining unit), who are members of the same union.
- MTA is pursuing state legislation to provide health care coverage for adjuncts in community colleges, state universities, and the UMass system. (H. 4153)
- The pay offer from the BHE (as of 5/1/18) is for a 0% increase in 2018 and a 1% increase in 2019.
- At the 5/1/18 meeting of the Board of Higher Education, President Ellen Kennedy of Berkshire Community College told the BHE she hopes the contract disputes will be settled soon. MCCC members believe the College Presidents appreciate the hard work and professionalism of all community college employees.
- Conditions can be improved: Adjuncts at UMass Boston and Amherst (also members of MTA) have a path to parity and benefits if they teach a half-time course load, and have greater job security and opportunities to become fulltime faculty.
Community colleges offer the best hope for working families to have a chance at the American Dream. Our community colleges offer the best and, sometimes, only pathway toward the bright future that is the basic right of all who have chosen to make America their home.
Nevertheless, we must not allow the success of these institutions to result from the exploitation of the dedicated, hard-working adjuncts who often care more about their students than about themselves. Our Commonwealth’s community colleges deserve adequate funding. Students at Massachusetts’ community colleges deserve to learn in institutions which are adequately funded and with faculty and staff earning a fair and decent wage. All adjunct instructors at the community college deserve compensation equal to their full-time counterparts for doing the same work.