NYU Adjuncts and Elected Allies Turn Up the Heat for Paid Family Leave

Adjunct faculty at NYU campaigning to win paid family leave received support recently in the form of a letter signed by 34 NYC lawmakers who wrote that the added benefit would help both academic workers and students at the university. Council Member Tiffany Cabán, who led the letter, also penned an op-ed calling on NYU to do right by its adjuncts.

David Palmer, the adjunct faculty union’s unit chair, said that without the paid leave, faculty are forced to choose between their positions at the university and caring for sick family members, bonding with their newborns or stepping in when a family member in the military is deployed abroad. “These are decisions that adjunct faculty face on a regular basis,” he said.

Under a state law enacted in 2016, eligible part-time and full-time workers in New York are guaranteed up to 12 weeks of job protected paid family leave while being paid two-thirds of their standard wage. But several categories of workers are excluded from benefit, including most academic workers, religious employees like ministers or rabbis, and golf caddies. UAW Local 7902, which represents the NYU adjunct faculty, has pushed for a bill that would expand the paid family leave benefits to cover academic workers, but efforts to expand the legislation to cover the adjunct faculty have so far been unsuccessful.

In the meantime, NYU's academic workers have been pushing for around a year to secure a side letter to their ongoing collective bargaining agreement with the university that would grant around 3,000 adjunct faculty paid family leave. The union delivered a letter of its own last year to university leadership calling for the benefit and 1,100 adjunct faculty members have since signed a petition in support of the move.

“For NYU the cost would be minimal,” Palmer explained. “It's just about the will to do this.” Read more in The Chief-Leader.