Adjuncts rally for health care
By
NEW YORK--Some 400 people rallied outside a meeting of the City University of New York (CUNY) Board of Trustees to demand that CUNY cover its share of the cost health care coverage for 1,700 adjunct teachers. Another 100 people, including adjuncts, students and staff, went inside the meeting to voice their concerns.
The protest was called by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the faculty union at CUNY, as part of its anti-austerity campaign to draw attention to the threat that adjuncts could lose their health care coverage by August 2012.
The PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund, which pays for adjuncts' health insurance benefits, is running out of money and will be unable to continue funding insurance for the 1,700 eligible adjuncts in a year's time--and that's not to mention the thousands of other adjuncts who should qualify for coverage, but don't. CUNY only covers 20 percent of the costs paid out by the Fund, and administrators are saying they would have to cut from elsewhere in the system to provide any more funds for health care.
Outside the Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College, the indignation of adjuncts and their supporters was clear. The protesters chanted and held signs, including ones reading: CUNY, do the right thing." Leaders of the PSC even had to separate picketers into two groups since they overflowed the space available for one.
After the demonstration, PSC President Barbara Bowen reported that Chancellor Goldstein promised CUNY would seek funding for adjunct health insurance from the state government. This is a step in the right direction, but the state legislature--which passed a budget with deep cuts in every area, including education--hasn't agreed to the proposal, and adjuncts will be on guard to make sure CUNY doesn't backtrack on this promise.
The PSC, adjuncts, staff and students need to support each other in the struggle for all their rights, including health insurance benefits for all CUNY employees. CUNY depends on their adjuncts and staff--we need to make the university and the state do what they need to in order to pay for our health care. It's the least they can do.
