Adjunct Group Begins a Push for Unemployment

May 24, 2010
By Audrey Williams June
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The New Faculty Majority, a national adjunct advocacy group, plans to formally announce on Monday a campaign to push more out-of-work adjuncts to file for unemployment insurance between academic terms and during summer breaks. The organization's goal, ultimately, is to change a federal law that some colleges routinely invoke to keep adjuncts from receiving unemployment benefits during those interims.

Maria Maisto, president of the advocacy group and an adjunct who works in Ohio, says the organization's decision to undertake the National Unemployment Compensation Initiative stemmed from a recession that has worsened the already-tenuous job security of adjuncts and has thrust unemployment benefits into "the public eye right now. But many adjunct and contingent faculty don't realize that they're eligible to file."....