Sad Sacademics
There’s just so much to enjoy in this story, I won’t burden you with a preamble:
Professors file health care lawsuit
Adjunct instructors challenge denial of insurance coverageA group of part-time community college instructors filed a lawsuit yesterday against the state, saying that hundreds of adjunct faculty in Massachusetts’ public higher education system are unfairly denied health care coverage.
The lawsuit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court on behalf of five instructors, follows nearly a decade of unsuccessful wrangling with state legislators to get an adjunct health insurance bill enacted into law. It also comes as schools, particularly community colleges, are increasingly turning to adjuncts amid burgeoning enrollment.
“We’ve been trying on the Hill to persuade the state to do the right thing, and, to be frank, I just ran out of patience,’’ said Joseph T. LeBlanc, president of the Massachusetts Community College Council, which is a plaintiff in the suit, along with the Massachusetts Teachers Association. “It’s a case of justice. The state ought to be providing a large chunk of these people with a health insurance plan.’’
The situation is particularly startling, the plaintiffs say, given the 2006 state law mandating health insurance coverage for all residents. The Teachers Association estimates that about 500 adjunct faculty members meet the state’s longtime definition of part-time employees - those who working at least 18.75 hours a week - and should be eligible for state health insurance because they work at least that amount, including classroom, grading, and preparation time.
If successful, the lawsuit would set a legal precedent that would extend to adjunct faculty at all the state colleges and universities, said Matthew Jones, attorney for the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
I like how the headline calls these people “professors”, while the article uses the more accurate and less prestigious “instructors” or “adjuncts”. But that’s an aside.
The real tastiness is that the state which “boasts” (read: labors under) the nation’s deluxe model of socialized medicine is actively denying state employees their basic human right of health insurance. Excuse me while I hold my sides and slap my knee.
What’s that? Where’d I get the notion that health insurance is a basic human right? Why, the story told me so.
Amy Whitcomb Slemmer - executive director of Health Care For All, a consumer advocate group - said health care is “a basic human right.’’
“To deny it to educators, whom we entrust to cultivate and enrich the state’s young minds, seems unkind and unfair,’’ said Slemmer.
I guess that makes the state’s higher education authority a junta, and maybe the Governor a Robert Mugabe—both violators of “basic human rights”.
Governor Deval Patrick ran and won with the slogan “Together We Can”. Later, his campaign guru, David Axelrod, won with another candidate under the banner of “Yes We Can”. Today, adjunct instructors in Massachusetts’ community colleges (the overwhelming majority of whom voted for both these bozos, I feel safe in saying) can say, full of hope and change, “Together, We’re Conned”.