Obamacare and Part-Time Employees

If the Internet chatter about Obamacare's requirement that large companies provide health insurance to employees working at least 30 hours a week is representative of how Americans feel about the law, our politics are in an even worse state than I thought. Dozens of news articles document examples of employers cutting their workers' hours to avoid having to provide them with insurance, and the tone of many of these articles gives them an implicit criticism of the healthcare law.  Readers’ comments are much more explicit.  There's been an outpouring of sympathy for the workers, but almost all the blame has been placed on the President with little criticism of the employers who are actually cutting the hours.  Yes, having to provide insurance will hurt their profits, but isn't this a price companies should have to pay when their profits depend on the exploitation of their part-time workers?

This, of course, is an oversimplification of the relationship between large companies and  their part-time employees.  In many instances, the part-time status is mutually beneficial.  Businesses like part-time employees because they are cheaper and easier to let go than full-time ones.  Moreover, part-time positions are easier to find than full-time positions, and plenty of employees in part-time status like the flexibility of their positions and aren't looking for full-time work.  However, it's also true that in too many instances large companies rely so heavily on part-time employees that they end up performing the vast majority of the work.  This is especially true in higher education, and particularly in two-year colleges.

It's fairly routine for adjunct (part-time) instructors to teach well over 50% of the courses at a two-year college.  I have worked as an adjunct at several different colleges and universities, and I vividly remember that during the first adjunct orientation I attended, in her welcome comments, a vice-president for academic affairs stated that the college relied on adjuncts for over 70% of its courses.  She proudly provided this statistic as evidence of how integral adjuncts were to the college, but it had the opposite effect on me:  not only did I feel cheated, but I felt the college was cheating its students as well.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.  In principle, there's nothing wrong with adjunct positions. Many are taught by retired teachers or other professionals who are interested in teaching only a class or two every semester to stay active and supplement their income.  Other adjunct instructors are recent graduates who lack the teaching experience required for full-time positions.  Colleges unwilling to hire them full-time will hire them as adjuncts, and then when full-time positions are available will often hire from their pool of adjuncts.  The low labor costs for adjunct positions also help colleges to offer tuition at affordable rates.

It's not uncommon, however, for adjuncts to teach more classes per semester than full-time instructors.  They still earn less than the full-time instructors and receive no benefits.  They are hired on a course-by-course basis, and their courses can be cancelled due to low enrollment up to a week into the semester, which means that they could teach a class for a week, only to have it cancelled and then receive no compensation for that week of work, not to mention the prep work completed outside of class.  There's little incentive for adjuncts to meet with students outside of class (although I'm sure most of them do) or to spend much time grading assignments or prepping for class.

In the long term, this over reliance on adjuncts benefits no one.  In addition to creating large numbers of second-class instructors who perform most of the teaching, it undermines the quality of education students receive.  Adjuncts simply aren't compensated well enough to spend much time outside of class preparing lessons and grading assignments, so they inevitably take shortcuts.  Moreover, while this model has helped colleges save money, it has enabled them to rely on a business model that is unsustainable.  The implementation of Obamacare next year will force colleges to finally face the problems they have created for themselves by relying too heavily on adjuncts.

Predictably, most schools are planning to cut their adjuncts’ hours to avoid having to provide them insurance.  It's difficult to quantify the amount of work instructors complete, so the formula that applies to adjuncts is that they must receive insurance if they teach at least 75% of the teaching load of full-time faculty.  In two-year colleges, full-time faculty typically teach 5 to 6 classes a semester, so adjuncts teaching at least 5 classes must be provided insurance.  To its credit, Midlands Technical College, where I taught as an adjunct during the last academic year, is offering insurance for its adjuncts, and rather than trying to limit the number of courses individual adjuncts can teach, at least some departments have offered to give adjuncts more classes, so they will be eligible to receive the insurance benefit.  However, Midlands is the exception.  In reading about how colleges will deal with the healthcare requirement, I haven't found any other examples of schools that will offer their adjuncts insurance.

Also predictably, blame for the economic hardship that adjuncts will soon endure from having their courses cut has been placed almost exclusively on President Obama.  Yes, his healthcare law is a reason why colleges are choosing to cut their adjuncts' hours, but it's the colleges, not the President, making the choice.  Criticism should be directed at these colleges, not only for cutting their adjuncts' hours rather than provide them with insurance, but also for relying on a business model that depends on part-time instructors to perform most of their teaching.  I don't pretend to know a better model, but colleges and the lawmakers who make decisions about their budgets should stop pretending that the current one works.

Rather than acting on a gut reaction to criticize everything the President does, I wish more Americans would take a step back and think more about the big picture.  One does not have to support the President or his healthcare law to recognize that rather than hurting part-time workers it is drawing attention to the ways in which they are often exploited by their employers.  Nor does one have to be a crazy liberal to come to the common sense conclusion that when a large company cuts its workers hours to avoid having to provide them with health insurance it is the company hurting the workers and not the President.