'We are not invisible anymore:' Brookdale, adjuncts settle union fight

MIDDLETOWN ― Brookdale Community College reached a deal with its part-time faculty that gives the educators the higher pay they demanded while also fulfilling what students have said is a key need: More facetime with their professors.

Leaders of Monmouth County's community college this week ratified the first contract with the Brookdale Adjunct Faculty Chapter of the United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey, which also approved the deal with a 74-1 vote last week.

"It was a perfect situation where we able to get something the students were asking for and also the extra pay the adjuncts wanted," Brookdale President David Stout said. "It was good for our students and good for adjuncts."

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Leaders of the adjunct union said the first contract made its members feel like they are a stronger part of Brookdale overall.

"We are not invisible anymore," said Joan Carroll, an adjunct math professor who served on the bargaining committee with fellow adjunct faculty members Jim Schmitt, who teaches math, and Karen Strickland, who teaches English.

Adjunct faculty are part-time employees who teach courses at colleges and universities on a contract basis versus the full-time faculty, who earn a set salary. Adjunct staff also don't earn benefits like health care, jury duty pay or bereavement leave that full-time faculty get.

The contract is a six-year deal retroactive to July 1, 2019, and will run through the 2024-25 academic year. The deal hit on key issues for the adjunct staff: higher pay in a paycheck that comes sooner after the start of each semester.

The contract includes annual increases in adjuncts pay from $825 per credit they have been making to $850 per credit for the 2019-20 academic year. The increases continue each year, reaching $985 per credit for the final year of the contract.

Stout said the per credit pay rate is still in line with Brookdale's "overload" rate, the amount full-time staff get paid per credit for teaching classes beyond their minimum required course load.

But the school was able to boost what adjunct faculty make by adding office hours for adjunct staff. They previously were not paid nor were they required to have office hours, Stout said.

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Now, the adjunct staff will be required to offer one hour of virtual office time each week, according to the contract. They will be paid $46.50 per hour for the 2022-23 school year, which will increase to $49.25 per hour by the last year of the contract.

Stout estimated the paid office hours will provide adjuncts an extra $300 per semester.

The contract also requires Brookdale to start paying its adjunct staff roughly one pay period sooner than it had been. Fall semester pay will start by Oct. 15 and spring semester pay will be by Feb. 28.

The delay in pay is caused by a division of teaching between full-time and adjunct faculty.

Brookdale students can add and drop classes for the first 10 days of the semester. That means some classes could be cut if there aren't enough students for them. Full-time faculty members can "bump" adjunct faculty — taking over teaching responsibilities for courses that had been assigned to adjuncts — to bolster their course load if a class eliminated drops them below their minimum requirements.

That uncertainty at the start of the semester made it hard to determine who was teaching what class and, in turn, who should be paid.

Carroll said the new pay deadlines means adjunct staff will be paid about six weeks after the start of each semester. She said the adjunct faculty hopes to improve on that timeline in subsequent contracts.

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Susanne Cervenka covers Monmouth County government and property tax issues, winning several state and regional awards for her work. She's covered local government for 18 years, with stops in Ohio and Florida before arriving in New Jersey in 2013. Contact her at @scervenka; 732-643-4229; scervenka@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Brookdale Community College NJ settles adjuncts union fight