In my inbox yesterday: “I am about to begin teaching tomorrow and I have yet to receive my contract…”
My correspondent, an adjunct instructor in a philosophy department at a highly regarded private university, notes that this is not the only time this has happened nor are they the only person to whom it has happened.
And it has highly objectionable consequences, as they explain:
At my university… if you don’t receive your contract by a certain time, your pay can often be delayed by one or two months, as you only get paid once a month at the end of the month, and [at the earliest] not until the end of the first month of classes in the Fall. This leads to scenarios in which, through no fault of my own, I am expected to teach for free with no guaranteed money coming in, and no knowledge of when I will be paid exactly.
The instructor brought this to my attention, they say, because “I imagine this happens elsewhere, and I think it is one of the things that should be part of the conversation about adjunct rights.”
The university, or someone at the university, is not giving (the prospect of) this intolerable situation the attention it deserves. If an institution is going to rely on instructors hired on annual contracts, its bureaucracy ought to be able to expedite those contracts and pay the instructors in a timely manner.
Does this problem occur at your university? Is it ongoing and addressed with remedial measures (and if so, what)? Did it used to and was resolved (if so, how)? Discussion welcome.
There’s no tenure here, and we routinely go years without a contract–while the union and the institution negotiate. Our last round of negotiations wrapped up last December/January, but covered the period up to December 2023, so we’re back at the negotiating table and without a contract again.
But that doesn’t disrupt our pay (also at the end of the month). What the OP describes is unconscionable.
Can I ask where you are? No axe to grind, just good to know this sort of thing for future job searches…
Capilano University
North Vancouver Canada
It sounds like you are talking about a different thing? You are talking about a situation where there is no collective bargaining agreement, i.e. no contract between the employer and the union representing the employees collectively. In such a situation, there will almost always still be employment contracts between the employer and all individual employees. The correspondent is talking about a situation in which employees are hired temporily each semester and they receive a new written, individual contract at the start of each semester. Yet, these contracts are delayed.
Yes, this happens elsewhere. I have adjuncted for over a decade at a large public university in Georgia. I regularly receive the contract after classes begin. It apparently happened so often to others that they now only pay us 4 times a semester rather than 5 (it was 5 for the first 8 or so years). So you prep the course, teach 5 1/2 weeks of classes and then finally get a paycheck at the end of September. And there is no “guarantee” that you will even have the course (since no contract) until after courses have already started.
I just wrote this in a longer post, but I am saying it again here because it might become important for some. You have a contract from the moment that you start teaching, just not a written one. If a representative of the university instructs you to do any work and promises pay, then you have a contract from the moment you start doing that work. The university is under an obligation to honour that contract, even if they haven’t issued a written contract.
Sure, verbal contracts are contracts. You have a contract from the moment you are under obligation to teach and have sections in an LMS available to you/course lists/etc. I’m taking your comment charitably, but it matters little to under-paid adjuncts that they “have a contract” when they have no security. Admins could change the instructor the first day of classes and the adjunct would be out of the money (and would have wasted time prepping).
Again, I know verbal contracts are contracts, but that is the case generally in employment law. When someone offers you a job verbally (and not yet in writing) you do have a contract… but good luck fighting the system to enforce that contract.
This happened at a uni I taught for in New Zealand, because the Dean of Arts insisted on signing each contract and only wanted to do it at a set time each week. The university was sued for this practice and lost in the employment court.
one of the state universities i worked at had an HR department that would get backlogged on processing the entirely foreseeable amount of adjunct hire and rolling rehire paperwork over the summer and just lump any pay that should’ve been due from the stub few days of an initial fall pay period into the next paycheck—a little administrative switcheroo that mattered little to anyone except the people it affected most, adjuncts with precarious finances.
when i was really counting on that two or three days of pay once and couldn’t get it, i complained and it emerged that HR wasn’t even expediting the processing of offer letters received months before, on the idea that with the volatility in hiring close to the start of the term it was better for them to do it all as late as possible.
my chair told me he had complained repeatedly to higher ups about this, but it fell on deaf ears. this was a school with a union. (the adjuncts had no clout compared to the full timers who dominated the union.)
This is a regular feature at my private institution–because they (not academics but bean counters) want to ensure the section is full before contracts are issued–so that happens after drop-add ends. Even for sections that are clearly full. And … we have full-time faculty who have yet to receive a contract as of this writing for classes that began yesterday.
This regularly happens to the adjuncts at my current institution (flagship campus of R1 public). Our problem is partly due to HR positions being underpaid (and hence both understaffed and lacking quality staff). Of course, our excessive reliance on adjunct labor exacerbate HR workload with new contracts every semester and means that so-called “cheap adjunct labor” is not actually all that cheap.
Yes, when your school insists on regularly staffing classes with adjuncts, they not only show that they don’t value the instruction in those classes, they also demonstrate that they don’t value the time of the admin staff and tenure stream faculty who have to administer all of that adjunct hiring.
Re “no guaranteed money coming in”. I was a shop steward for an American union chapter mostly comprising grad students. I never had to deal with such issues, but my understanding of the law is that you don’t need a written contract to be owed your wages. If a representative of an employer tells that you will get paid and instructs you to do some work, then you enter into an employment contract the moment you start performing that work. The default conditions are those customary in the industry. So, in the case of adjuncting, probably the same as your last contract. So, if an employer refused to issue you a contract after you started teaching, you could sue them at least for the pay for work delivered, and likely for employment during the rest of the semester (or compensation). In fact, if the contract offered to you has worse conditions than your last one and you already started teaching by the time you see it, you could likely refuse it and insist on working under the old contract! Of course, this would be all very annoying, and potentially expensive. It is highly unprofessional by an employer not to issue written contracts!
This is happening to my partner right now. Despite being offered the position in the Spring, he has yet to get a contract. He’s taught for two weeks and is considering just not teaching next week. Without a contract, he also can’t sign up for benefits, and so has no health insurance!
It happened to me in Paris in a public university in psychology. I have never been paid for my work. And the head of the department was furious when, the year after, I refused to teach!… She said she would never recruit me anymore… So sad for her…
Since 5 years ago, in France it was usual to be paid 6 months after you began to work. Now, it happens but it is no more legal. However, I still know a lawyer to taught in Paris I Sorbonne University in work right and she’s never been paid.
This happened regularly at my PhD institution where grad employees were represented by a great union. Over half the employees were not even receiving an offer letter by a month before teaching (which is already cutting it close to get payroll sorted out in time for the first payday). The number who had to start teaching without an offer letter was also unreasonably high (I’d say it happened to me about 25% of the time, semester to semester). We added language to the contract that imposed fines on the university for late letters. My recollection is that this made only a very modest difference; the admins were content to just pay the fines.
one of my unionized adjuncting schools behaved similarly. when course cancellations became compensated, they tightened up so that they wouldn’t be doing many of them. when offer letters are often late, but it’s not penalized in the contract, they don’t care. at another school, same union, different contract, late offer letters are penalized so they send them on time.
I had this occur to me as well at a private university. The contract appeared the first day of the semester but required filing a complaint and mentioning my hesitancy with continuing course prep, without access to the online course and guarantee of pay.
Seeing this is not unheard of (and often is much worse for others) is not surprising, even without my own experience.
This happens regularly, but is unacceptable. As I see it, the chance that an adjunct will start teaching and then not be hired is pretty small. The most common problem is that paychecks are delayed. Potentially, the pay could turn out to be lower than the adjunct agreed to or expected. The reality is that adjuncts have little to no recourse in these situations if they want to teach those sections. I suppose an adjunct could just not show up for sections if they don’t receive a contract. Few adjuncts have the resources or alternative options making this feasible, of course.
I am working as an adjunct at a small private university in Florida. I was fired in April (I was tenured, full professor) because, due to financial problems, my department was eliminated. I agreed to work as a “Faculty Affiliate – in Kind” (whatever that means) – basically an adjunct in the university’s “teach-out” plan. I learned two days ago that we (the adjuncts) will be paid October 15 and December 15, and we are currently working without a contract. Would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions (or questions!).
I have been teaching at a community college with a scheduled first day of class on August 18th and as I write this it is September 23rd and I still have not received my contract for THIS semester. I reached out to my dept head and she replied that we should receive contracts in October. I will finish teaching my first class in the first or second week of october. So incredibly frustrating.