Adjunct Unemployment Benefits History

Any adjunct in today’s academy needs to understand a little history about adjunct unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits were created as part of the social security Act of 1935. However, farm workers, domestic workers and all public employees were deliberately excluded from collecting unemployment benefits. Public employees included teachers in public schools and both public and private institutions of higher learning.

During the 1970, teachers were allowed to collect unemployment benefits provided they could demonstrate there was no “reasonable assurance” of re-employment. According to Access to Unemployment Benefits for Contingent Faculty: A manual for applicants to gain full rights to benefits (published by Chicago COCAL, the Chicago Coalition on Contingent Academic Labor October 2007), only teachers were required to demonstrate this “reasonable assurance.” Auto workers, seasonal food processors, construction workers and garment and fashion industry workers were not under any burden to demonstrate “reasonable assurance.”

Any Adjunct Can Collect Unemployment Benefits

There is no reason an adjunct should be refused unemployment benefits. Still, there are adjuncts who actually deny themselves even the opportunity apply for unemployment benefits because they simply refuse to believe they are laborers.

The absurd notion that an adjunct today could believe that he or she isn’t a laborer is almost beyond belief. Why would an adjunct not apply for unemployment benefits he or she has a right to collect? For the most part, it is a failure of the education system itself. One observer of the academic scene articulated the failure as “unthinkingly intentional.”

If this is an accurate definition of the failure of the higher education system to teach an adjunct how to not take financial care of himself or herself, then the question of how much more is not taught in this unthinkingly intentional fashion should be asked by every adjunct who is without a paycheck.

Tell An Adjunct About Unemployment Benefits

It would be very helpful if those who understand that they are laborers would tell the next adjunct coming down the road that he or she is a laborer with the right to apply for and collect unemployment benefits. It is understood that it might be difficult for a car mechanic to inform a Ph.D. in American Literature that he or she is actually a laborer, but that is what it just might take to wake up the academic masses to their right to unemployment benefits, and it might help an academic feed his or her family over a long, hot summer.