Adjunct faculty could benefit from the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but presumably only those in cases where the employer defines their status as “full-time” workers who put in 30 hours or more per week. In some cases, adjuncts are already seeing their semester course loads reduced by schools wary of incurring health insurance obligations under the new law.
The ACA (President Obama’s signature health insurance law) was passed to extend health insurance to more Americans through subsidies for the uninsured and new regulations on employers. The Act will require employers with more than 50 full-time employees (defined as those who work more than 30 or more hours per week) to offer health insurance plans to their employees or pay a penalty. Because of the vagaries currently associated with determining full-time status, AFTNJ is closely monitoring how the law will impact our many members who are adjunct faculty at colleges and universities across the state.
The regulations governing the definition of full-time status are being developed and have not explicitly dealt with how adjunct faculty’s full-time status will be determined, according to AFT researcher Amy Clary. U.S. Department of Treasury regulations require that employers look back at the previous 3 to 12 months and use a “reasonable method” for determining which employees work 30 or more hours per week, thus attaining full-time status. The regulations stipulate that employers cannot re-characterize an employee’s workload to fall below the full-time threshold or fail to account for aspects of their employment. For instance, the regulations specify an employer cannot “take into account only classroom or other instruction time and not other hours that are necessary to perform the employee’s duties, such as class preparation time.”
As it currently stands, college and university managers will have their own authority to set standards for determining the full-time status of adjunct faculty, as long as the standard is what the regulations characterize as “reasonable.” AFT National has been in contact with Treasury during the rulemaking process and recommended that adjunct faculty teaching 12 credits a semester should qualify as a full-time employee, though the recommendation was not accepted.
Employees may be eligible for subsidies to purchase their own plans if they do not have an employer-provided health insurance plan that fits the ACA requirements. Subsidies are available if the employer does not offer insurance and the employee’s income is less than 400% of the federal poverty line or if the the cost of the employer’s plan is more than 9.5% of the employee’s income (income must be less than 400% of federal poverty level).
If you are wondering where adjuncts might fit in a discussion of poverty levels, consider the current measure (will probably be adjusted slightly before ACA implementation in 2014), that 400% of the federal poverty level would be $44,680 for an individual or $92,200 for a family of four. To fully comply with the new law, employers must offer plans to at least 95% of full-time employees.
AFTNJ will continue to track how the new health insurance law will impact adjunct faculty and advocate for fairness.